Sometimes, we designers just need a little help getting started, or even getting over a hurdle in our design knowledge. For these moments, the internet has graciously provided us with a number of free resources to solve almost any problem.
In this blog post, we’ll go through a host of web design resources that should be in every designer’s toolbox.
General
Dribbble is a community created by designers, for designer designers, where they gather together and answer different questions and share their work. It is a place to explore, discover and promote design.
Behance is an online portfolio website created in order to connect different creatives around the world from multiple industries, including photography, fashion, web development and web design.
DeviantArt has been offering its amazing services for a over a decade. It is a great place to look for digital art, photography and texts etc. It has a very active community offering a host of projects for your inspiration.
Ember allows you to take screenshots, remember ideas and elements that inspire you, make comments and wishlists, and iteratively improve on your design work.
Awwwards recognizes the talents and efforts of some of the best web designers and agencies in the world. A tremendous help if you are looking for inspiration on the subject matter.
Fonts Resources
DaFont.com offers over 11,000 fonts for you to use. It also offers access to tools relevant to the font category, which may turn out to be very handy when you are working with different fonts.
Urbanfonts offers over 8,000 different types of fonts to its users. They are nicely divided into categories for easy navigation and to help you find what you are looking for efficiently.
WhatTheFont is unique in terms of that fact that you can upload an image of the font you are interested in. The website then analyzes the font and lets you know which it is so you can use it if you wish.
1001FreeFonts offers a collection of free and premium fonts for you to download and use. It offers more than 10,000 fonts divided into various different categories for easy navigation and search.
If you are looking for fonts that you can use for free commercially, this is the website for you to visit. They will let you use fonts for free whether you have commercial or personal intent.
MyFonts has plenty of free and premium fonts, with a series of tools to help you use them in your designs.
Icons Resources
Flaticon is an absolutely free project which is created by and for different developers and designers. If you are a designer you can choose to collaborate with the website or use it for its available services.
Findicons is a search engine that will help you find free icons. The ones you are looking for. They claim to have the largest database, so you can be certain you will not be disappointed.
DryIcons offers absolutely free downloads for the 5,000 icons and 1,700 vector graphics they have created so far. You will not have to pay a dime and use their services as you like.
If you are looking for icons, IconArchive is possibly the best place to start. They offer you over 32,000 icon categories to search from.
IconFinder has been around since 2007, and has been a pioneer in developing icons ever since.
Graphic and Adobe Photoshop Resources
Kuler is a tool provided by Adobe so you can safely assume it is powerful. You can browse, create and share different color themes in a very easy manner. It is web-based, but you can download a desktop application.
This is a creative community which allows you to create patterns, palettes and colors. You can also have discussion with other group members as to the trends and ask opinions on your work.
This is a website dedicated to the sole purpose of finding different palettes from images you upload. You can also browse other user’s palettes.
This particular website offers a host of different Photoshop plugins and filters you can use to create amazing photo effects turning regular pictures into something extraordinary. You will need Photoshop to make this app work.
Social Kit offers a host of different plugins with various social media templates including Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.
Layrs is an Adobe Photoshop extension and in order to use it, you will need the application pre-installed. It offers a collection of different scripts that will make the use of Photoshop a lot easier.
This is a free Photoshop plugin. You can use it to cut all your assets and export them to different devices that you use. The website offers a tutorial on how to use this, very handy, tool. drag and drop website builder really helps for development of sites.
If you are looking for vector assets, browse no more. This particular website will offer you one of the largest collection of vector assets for free. There are a few graphics that you will have to pay for.
If you are looking to convert your Photoshop layers to CSS3 you can use this cloud based Adobe Photoshop plugin. Needless to say, Adobe Photoshop should already be installed on your device.
Textures Resources
DeviantArt’s texture database is as impressive as the rest of their site, and a huge resource boost for designers looking for unique textures for web-based projects.
CG CG Textures is believed to be one of the world’s s best when it comes to searching for textures and using them freely. You can even contribute to the already vast expanse of textures available.
Zen Textures provides hundreds of unique textures, especially ones that are particularly hard to locate. They offer a mix of paid and free textures for use.
Texture Lovers archive some of the more amazing free textures from around the internet.
Finally, don’t forget our own IM Free if you are looking for free images.
