5 Free Design Tools for Designers & Marketers Alike
I haven’t met one person in my life that hasn’t taken something that was given to them for free, unless it was something that they really REALLY didn’t need. Luckily for you, I’m not that aunt of yours who tries to give you some old, ugly kick-knack every time you go to her house. No siree! I am going to give you a list of FREE design tools you can use, and will actually want to use, that can be used by either designers like me or even design savvy marketers. Design freebies that you can find online are something I have become quite the hoarder of (in a good way … is that possible?) and I would like to share them with you!
Unsplash
This site has gorgeous photos, all for free. You can find some great outdoor/nature images, architectural photographs, or pictures from different places, cities, or countries. You can either use the search bar at the top right corner and search for something in particular, new photos, featured photos, or you can use the collections button in the top left hand corner. This allows you to search for photos by different groups that people have put together. Many of these photos would be perfect for social media, landing page, or blog image use, too!
Creative Market
When you first get to this site, a pop-up box will appear saying, “Download these free design assets!” You can either sign-up through Facebook or use an email. Now of course you can just download the ones that interest you, but I usually download everything I think I might use, save them in a folder on my desktop. Then, every couple of weeks/months I’ll go through and get rid of the free goods I haven’t used or don’t plan on using (whoops, haven’t done this in a while!). These free goods get changed every week and there are always 6. Besides the free goods, the site has a ton of great illustrations, pattern, photos, fonts, you name it — and they are all at pretty fair prices too.
Pixel Surplus
This is similar to Creative Market, but you can still download the freebies they added last week, and the week before that. All of their free goods are all available for personal projects or commercial use. You can also buy photography and different bundles on their site. FYI: this site also usually has a ton of free, beautiful fonts for you to add to your collection!
Fribbble
If you are a fan of Dribbble, you will easily become a fan of Fribbble as well. This website displays all of the free downloads that Dribbble users put up in their “shots” (a post of their work). That includes free fonts, textures, UI kits, icons, patterns and lots more. It’s another great resource, especially because the freebies are from Dribbble users.
Sketch Repo
For all of those Sketch users out there, like myself, this site looks super cool and pretty handy. Their about page says it is a newer site but it has a lot of freebies already (141 pages so far). This has similar resources like the others I have mentioned, but they all work easily with Sketch. Users have added mockups, icons, gradients and colors, page templates, etc. Users will enjoy looking through this site for sure!
Well, there you have it — my list of websites I currently use or definitely plan on using for their freebies. I hope you found at least one new website throughout this post this that will inspire you. Happy designing!
— Bonus Freebies —
Here are a few other online resources for readers, from readers.
Pexels & Pexels Videos: Download great stock images and videos for any project, absolutely free.
Gratisography : Find unique free stock photos from the photographer Ryan McGuire. New pictures are added weekly.