Rob’s List of Free Design Stuff.

As a designer working in the small business end of the marketplace, I’ve come to realise that most people don’t have a lot of money to spend on marketing. So over the years I’ve built up a list of useful sources for various design stuff that is creative commons, open source, public domain, or royalty free. This month I present this list to you.

Fonts

• Font Squirrel 
  This is my go to place for fonts. While they don’t carry the big name brands, they always have alternatives that look almost the same and are free to use.
• DaFont
• Abstract Fonts
• Fontspace
• Google Fonts 
  While these fonts are designed for online use, they do work in print just fine.
• Identifont 
  A commercial font site but it can help you identify fonts from someone else’s design by answering a series of questions or give you alternatives to an existing fonts.
• What the Font  
  It’s a commercial font website but I use the what the font tool for figuring out what a font could be when I’m trying to recreate a customer’s design

Clipart – Photographic and Vector

• Open Clipart.ORG 
  The quality of the artwork can be a bit variable, and searching for items can be pot luck but they often have clipart on subjects that the other suppliers don’t
• Pexels
• StockSnap
• Pixabay
• Unsplash
• Gratisography
• Negative Space
• ISO Republic
• Pic Jumbo
• New Old Stock Photos
• Vector Me
• Retro Vectors
• QVectors
• Vector Portal
• Vecteezy

Textures for backgrounds and fills

• Subtle Patterns.com
  More for websites but still useful.
• Texturer
• Pattern Library
• Texture King
• Transparent Textures

General – for all kinds of stuff

• Wikimedia Commons
  This is the media arm of the wikipedia, full all sorts of stuff but some of it is excluded from commercial use so read the licensing details before you download.
• Freebies Gallery
• The National Archives
  You have to dig some times but it’s one best resources for New Zealand related material.
• The National Library of New Zealand
  I never cease to be amazed to find what they have made available for public use that’s just a mouse click away.

Applications to design work with

• Libre Office
  The open sourced alternative to MS Office that has a basic but still useful desktop publishing tool in the form of the draw module. While it does ask for donation, you don’t have to make one to download and use it.
• Paint Dot Net
  Nowhere near the power of Photoshop and nowhere near the complexity to use. I use it all the time for quick image editing.
• Gimp
  The open sourced alternative to Photoshop that’s free and in some ways more powerful thanks to the huge range of addons you can install. It’s interface can take a while to get use to but there are plug-ins that let you change to act like different programs
• Inkscape
  The alternative to Adobes’ Illustrator, it’s still under active development so it has some quirks but I’ve found it can do some things a few clicks that can take minutes with Adobe.
• Scribus
  Being the open source alternative to Adobes’ Indesign desktop publishing program, it’s a powerful design tool that can do everything from simple flyers to complex books. It does have a bit of a learning curve but when you understand it, it’s quite logical to use.

This is not the be all and end all of the resources that I call on when doing design work, but it’s a good starting point for people like yourself. I’ll update this as I discover new sources of material to use.