Doesn’t matter if you work on Photoshop, Illustrator or Sketch, all graphic designers swear by few resources without which they can’t live. These amazing resources give wing to a designer’s creativity, letting them fly and come up with beautiful designs. While designing a web page, mobile app UI or a social media posts, all designers need easy-to-use resources for icons, images, fonts, UI samples and inspiration. Although each person picks up resources as per their own use and inkling, some resources on the web are famous world over for their ease of use and of their open source nature. Without wasting any more time, let us discover the Internet’s best resources for a graphic designer.
Dose for Inspiration
Dribbble
Termed as the social network for creative types, it allows designers to showcase and share their work with like-minded people. As much as we love the social aspects of Dribbble, it works with more abundance as an ideal place for finding some mind blowing inspiration. Not only it allows you to get inspired by a wide variety of graphic artists, but it also let you follow the ones you like and be constantly spoilt with inspiration.
Another great website to discover amazing artwork! Curated by people like you and me, Pinterest tout itself to be the world’s catalogue of ideas. And to give credence where it is due, they are not very far off from that claim. The only problem for a designer with Pinterest is that they might digress from their actual work at hand and wander off into some enchanted board.
Haunts for Best Icons
Iconfinder
Think of anything, then go and type that on the search bar on the Iconfinder website. There is a good chance that your search will lead to an awesome icon. That is Iconfinder for you – the world’s top repository for icons. Founded in Copenhagen, this is one company which is high on passion and inspired to create world’s largest collection of icons. And it does have all kinds of icons one can think of. It offers free as well as paid plans to download and commercially use icons and makes great designs for great brands.
The Noun Project
Another website to find free icons, The Noun Project relies on its community to drive its mission. Easy to use and with a lot of options to pick from, TNP is a sought after place for designers to grab their icons. NTP has paid plans also for teams to go all out when in need of icons.
For Pixel Perfect Images
Pexels
An image says more than thousand words – So the saying goes and it couldn’t be truer for a designer. The right image can make or break a creative, it is the god’s honest truth. And if you want the best open source images available on the interweb, go to Pexels.com. The quality of its images is just wonderful and the collection getting bigger as we speak. There are two things really going for Pexels, first one is that its platform is free to use (though donations are welcome) and second is the non-stock looking image quality. Most of the biggest websites of the world who charge a bomb provide images which are so stalk-y; I’d rather take my iPhone and do my own shoot instead.
Pixa’bay
Another website for finding amazing images, Pixabay has a remarkable collection of royalty free images. However in addition to images, one can look for vectors and art illustrations as well, certifying Pixabay as a one stop destination for designers. Not only images but one can download videos as well from Pixabay, which makes it one of the most loved websites for designers and videographers alike. Founded by two adventure-loving German friends Hans and Simon, it is not their primary occupation and was started as a side project. God bless them!Colors and Patterns
Flat UI Color Picker
All designers need a tool for color picking, otherwise finding the perfect color will become the most insane part of being a designer. And for flat design project, nothing works better than the Flat UI Color Picker. A snoozy little website to pick colors from, it makes life so easy you will not believe that you weren’t using one for all this while.
Material Color Palette
For all material design projects, the best place to pick a color is the material pallet website. In addition to color pallets, one can also find cool icons to use.
TinEye Labs Multicolr Search
Arguably one of the nerdiest and coolest resources in this collection, TinEye Labs Multicolr search will blow your mind. While working on a particular project, it becomes difficult to find the right image for your project. This nifty search tool searches images based on colors you feed into the search. So let’s say your project needs blue color images, just put in the color code and let it show you the best images to go with your project theme. And worry not, the images are all open licensed on Flickr.
Subtle Patterns
Textures and patterns can add unknown layer and depth to a creative. Finding the perfect pattern/texture is difficult and Subtle Pattern website is the perfect place to find the best ones. All patterns are free to download but fall under creative common license with attribution required to be linked back. Having said that, the collection of patterns is so good, you’ll not have any problems in giving attribution.
Writing on the Wall with the right Fonts
Font Squirrel
Font squirrel is a great destination for free to use typefaces. It has a great collection of free to use fonts for any kind of projects. It also provides some really cool paid fonts one can buy, if the pocket allows. It has great features for font generation as well as font identification, making sure that users don’t leave Font Squirrel easily.
That’s it folks!
Though we have covered some epic resources in this blog, there are still a dearth of tools available out there, making lives easier for design loving folks like us. The above list is not exhaustive and will be updated as and when we find time to do so. It would be wise to advise you to read the T&C of the services mentioned in the above list to make sure you are legally using them.