20+ Sites for Essential Free Design Resources (2023)

Whether you’re a hobbyist or a professional designer, we all love getting things for free. The web is full of free design resources that can boost your creativity, enhance your productivity, or even help you tackle projects on a tight budget.

Is Free Always Low Quality?

The common perception is that free resources often lack quality or value. While that can be true to some extent, it’s not a universal rule.

Today, you can easily find free graphic assets that stand toe-to-toe with professionally designed materials.

What’s the Catch with Free Resources?

One drawback of using free assets is the risk of ending up with a project that looks similar to others, simply because the resources are accessible to everyone.

Additionally, free resources often come with specific licensing requirements. Some may necessitate giving credit to the original creator, while others may prohibit commercial use.

However, there’s good news! To save you time and hassle, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of resources, complete with their licensing details. This will help you determine if they’re appropriate for your project’s legal requirements.

Beyond that, some of these resources even offer raw files or built-in editing tools. This allows you to tailor the design assets to better fit your project’s overall theme.

Whether you’re in search of images, vector graphics, fonts, inspiration, or productivity tools, you’ll find everything you need in this article.

Now, let’s dive into the full list.

Vecteezy

Vecteezy started as a platform for free vector graphics and has since broadened its offerings to include stock photos and videos.

It enjoys widespread popularity among designers and illustrators, thanks to its community that contributes high-quality assets daily.

WordPress Openverse

Openverse is a collaboration with WordPress that provides a vast collection of photos and audio files. These are available under the Creative Commons license, free of charge.

The platform boasts over 600 million photo and audio files. Contributions are encouraged, allowing you to submit your photos to be indexed and used by others.

Unsplash

Unsplash is an excellent resource for high-quality photos covering a broad range of themes and categories, such as Nature, Architecture, 3D Renders, Fashion, Film, and Interiors.

All photos on Unsplash are available under the Unsplash license, which allows for both commercial and non-commercial usage without the need for attribution. You can also contribute your own photos to the platform.

Pexels

Pexels offers a wide array of free stock photos and videos, usable for both non-commercial and commercial purposes without the need for attribution.

The platform also provides API access for developers interested in integrating its vast library into their applications. Pexels has built-in integrations on platforms like Canva, Sketch, and provides add-ons for Photoshop, WordPress, and MS Office.

Undraw

Undraw offers a curated collection of illustrations to enhance your websites, products, and apps. The platform allows you to customize the color themes of these illustrations to match your project.

Available in both SVG and PNG formats, the illustrations are free to download, use, and modify.

Freepik

Freepik boasts a diverse collection of design assets, including product mockups, vector graphics, icons, and stock photos. Its powerful search functionality features granular filters to help you find the assets you need swiftly.

The platform is continually updated by its community to include the latest design trends and seasonal themes, ensuring fresh designs are available for events like New Year’s and Christmas.

Pixabay

Pixabay sets itself apart by offering a variety of media types—stock photos, videos, music, and sound effects. With over 2 million assets in its collection, you can use them for both non-commercial and commercial projects without attribution.

This platform is a valuable resource for creative professionals across various fields, be it design, photography, filmmaking, animation, or music.

Canva

Canva offers an extensive library of pre-made templates for various purposes—posters, flyers, infographics, presentations, social media posts, and even videos. The platform’s in-built editor allows for easy customization.

This is a handy tool for quickly producing well-designed materials for your business, whether it’s print or digital.

Flaticon

Flaticon is a treasure trove for icon seekers, boasting a collection of over 7 million. The platform offers icons in various formats such as PNG, SVG, EPS, and PSD. If you’re looking for animated icons, those are also available in GIF, MP4, and JSON formats.

Pixelify

Pixelify is a comprehensive resource for designers, offering a range of assets from fonts and mockups to illustrations and WordPress themes. The platform even includes Photoshop add-ons and presets, making it a one-stop-shop for all your design needs.

GlazeStock

GlazeStock offers a selection of expertly curated illustrations in diverse themes and categories like people, animals, business, and nature. The platform provides illustrations in both PNG and Adobe Illustrator formats, catering to various project needs.

UpLabs

If you’re a UI designer seeking inspiration, UpLabs is the place to be. The platform offers a plethora of UI kits, icons, and mockups suitable for both web and mobile devices. The assets are available in a variety of formats, including PSD, Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD, and HTML5.

UI8

UI8 offers a curated selection of design resources across various categories such as UI kits, wireframes, icons, fonts, and even 3D assets. Available in multiple file formats like Photoshop, Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD, and InVision, it gives your team the flexibility to work with their preferred software.

Icons8

Icons8 offers a comprehensive ecosystem for designers, featuring a rich collection of icons along with tools like Lunacy and Pichons. Additionally, it offers plugins for direct access to its library in Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Google Docs. The platform also features AI-powered tools for photo enhancement, background removal, and more.

Artboard Studio

Artboard Studio is a web application designed for collaborative mockup and template creation. It offers a wide range of templates for various products, including t-shirts, signboards, tickets, frames, and more. You can either start your design from scratch or choose from the platform’s extensive template collection.

Mixkit

Mixkit offers stock videos, music across different genres, sound effects, and video templates for Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Final Cut Pro. With new collections added weekly and curated for quality, it provides a treasure trove of free, high-quality video assets.

Humaaans

Humaaans offers a free library of customizable human illustrations created by Pablo Stanley. Mix and match poses, hairstyles, clothing, and more to create unique illustrations.

DrawKit

DrawKit offers a wide selection of hand-drawn illustrations and icons, covering themes like technology, online shopping, social work, cooking, and more. It even allows users to submit specific requests. The platform also offers a plugin for Figma, enabling direct access to its library right from the Figma editor.

FontFabric

FontFabric is your go-to resource for high-quality fonts that are sure to elevate your design projects. The platform offers a diverse range of font types, including Serif, Sans-serif, and Script, along with some unique custom options like Rust. Can’t find the perfect font? You can also request customizations or new font designs to fit your specific needs.