Welcome back to the blog.
This is a series of blog posts meant to highlight free design resources such as:
- Colour Palette Tools
- Fonts
- Font Pairing Tools
- Stock Images and Icons
- Mockups
- Miscellaneous Resources
These are all resources that I’ve genuinely used in the past and plan on using for future design projects.
To keep things current, I plan on updating these posts whenever I discover a resource that I enjoy using. In other words, if I like it, you’ll be hearing about it.
This post is going to focus on Stock Images and Icons.
Here are some of my favourites:
1. Unsplash
Unsplash is a tried and true favourite used by many for royalty free images. I’ve used them in several projects and even for personal use to update my laptop wallpaper with some of their stunning imagery.
2. Pexels
Pexels is another favourite that takes it up a notch. It provides royalty free stock images, in addition to videos, which is useful if that’s something your project also needs.
3. Pixabay
Pixabay takes things even further with a library of not only royalty free stock images, but also illustrations, vectors, videos, music, sound effects, 3D models and GIFs.
This makes it a well rounded, one-stop shop for your project needs.
Another feature I love about Pixabay is that it gives you the option to filter your searches, including the option to search for media with a transparent background. This is an especially useful feature as it saves you the time of removing backgrounds.
4. Nappy.co
I love this stock site for adding a diverse array of high quality images, featuring people of colour to online stock image libraries.
They’re of course free for commercial and personal use, and filtered according to categories, or you can simply search for what you need.
5. Magnific
(Formerly known as Freepik)
Magnific is another library that does a lot of heavy lifting as its library boasts photos, vectors, illustrations, icons, 3D models, videos, music, fonts, and more. This makes it another great one-stop shop for your projects.
Just keep in mind that users on the platform have a choice of utilising a free plan or a premium plan.
Assets downloaded on the free plan are limited to personal use only, which is important to keep in mind when you’re creating work for commercial use that you will be compensated for.
6. FreePNGimg
Ever tried downloading a “PNG” image from Google Images or somewhere else on the internet, only to find out that the background is not at all transparent as it should be? Yeah, me too. And it’s so frustrating.
For that reason, I’ve added FreePNGimg to this list.
It features a vast library of images, icons, SVGs and clipart you can freely download for your projects.
With such a large library, I’ve found that some of the images and clipart do look a little outdated, but don’t let that stop you. There are some real gems on there that can save you time searching for similar content on other platforms or removing image backgrounds manually.
Simply filter according to categories or search for what you need.
7. Flaticon
Flaticon allows you to search for and download static icons, animated icons and stickers.
I love that they range from simple to playful and colourful, providing something for everyone.
This platform is also split into a free version and a premium version.
Free assets are available for both personal and commercial use with attribution.
8. Google Fonts
Even though it’s not included in the title, you can actually find icons within the Google Fonts library.
They’re all simple, outlined icons with the option to change the size and colour before you download them in either SVG or PNG format.
The library is lengthy but you can easily use the search function to simplify your selection.
So there you have it, some of my favourite resources for Stock Images and Icons.
Whether you’ve heard of some of these before or none at all, I hope that this list can add a few valuable resources to your toolkit for your upcoming projects.
If you considered this list helpful, be sure to share it with a fellow creative and I’ll catch you in the next one.
Happy discovering!
Until next time,
Naomi
