As a business owner, you have to sometimes wear a few different hats. You’re the accountant, salesman and marketer. When marketing your business, you need to have great imagery and that’s where a graphic designer comes in handy.
But what if you have to be the designer too. “I don’t have the fancy kit! I don’t have the software! I don’t have the creative flare!” The panic sets in and you open Paint to try to cobble together something eye-catching using clipart.
Take a deep breath, step away from the Snipping Tool… We’ve put together a list of FREE graphic design resources that even a beginner can use. They’ll save you time, help you create a professional brand and bring home the bacon!
Free editing tools
Canva
Great to create anything from a poster to a social media graphic and with plenty of templates it’s hard to go wrong. Use it in the browser for an easy user experience or download the app for use on the go!
Adobe Spark
Similar to Canva spark has plenty of templates featuring the typical Adobe slick vibes. You can also use it to create videos and single-page websites! Comes with a desktop version and mobile apps for iOS and Android which are all very easy to use.
Icons8 Creator
Want to overlay a photo of an object over a background of your choosing? Photo Creator is the perfect tool for that! With plenty of stock images of models and objects to choose from and the backgrounds pre-removed it’s super quick and easy. No need to download anything, it all works in the browser.
Remove
If you have a photo already and you just want the background removing, this tool is surprisingly quick and effective!
Photopea
If you’ve got a PSD, XCF, Photoshop, Gimp, Sketch or any other image file you need to edit Photopea can work with them all. Looks scarily similar to Photoshop but works in your browser so no need to download anything!
Pixel Editor X
Basic but so straightforward to use! Work with layers, crop, add images, alter colours, you can even add textured overlays. What more could a budding graphic designer need?
Free video editors
InShot
An app available on IOS and Andriod, InShot is great for trimming clips down or playing with the playback speed. You can resize a clip for social media with handy pre-set sizes too.
Kizoa
Perfect for adding smooth transitions between video clips and photos. You can also add text and overlays all in the browser, nothing to download here!
Free Stock Images
Freepik
Freepik is a source for vectors, icons, and photos. The platform uploads thousands of resources every month, designed by Freepik’s team or the community of graphic designers and artists. Freepik allows you to use all free resources for personal and commercial projects. However, when you use the free resources, you need to give credit to the author.
Pixabay
Pixabay allows its community of creatives to share copyright-free images and videos. All 1 million+ images and videos are safe to use without asking for permission or giving credit to the artist – even for commercial purposes!
Burst by Shopify
E-commerce platform Shopify has created an online resource of stock images that you can use whether or not you’re a Shopify user. You can use them for both non-commercial and commercial purposes without attribution.
Landing Stock
Specifically, for landing pages, all the images on Landing Stock are high-quality, clean and minimalistic photos, that crop well and provide space for copy. It’s a web editors dream!
Vintage Stock Photos
If it’s something more retro you’re after Vintage Stock Photos collect royalty-free vintage photos from around the world and add them to their ever-growing collection. No need to credit, these photos are all free to use.
Illustrations
Drawkit
When it comes to illustrations try to use a similar style throughout, for a more put together scheme. DrawKit is a collection of free MIT licensed SVG illustrations designed by James Daly in his own signature style. With plenty to choose they’re a great addition to any project.
Humaaans
Created by Pablo Stanley, Humaaans are modular, vector illustrations that you can mix, match, rotate and position to create your own designs. Whatever you make is free to use without attribution.
Ouch Pics
Incredibly stylish and organised by illustration style, Ouch Pics is a selection of free vector illustrations from Icons8. Have a browse and see if there’s a style there that could suit your brand.
Fonts
FontSquirrel
Plenty of free for commercial use fonts in a variety of styles. They even have a font detector that can tell you what font is being used just by looking at it.
BeFonts
A vast collection of free fonts, including display, handwritten, retro and non-Western styles. The thumbnails give a great idea of how the fonts will look in use!
DaFont
With a huge range of free fonts to choose from and plenty of styles, DaFont is the place to go to when you need something to zhuzh up a boring page.
Not sure how to install a font? Read more about it here.
Stock videos
Coverr
A source of quality stock videos that are free to download for commercial and non-commercial use, no attribution required.
Mixkit
Very stylish, Mixkit is a curated gallery of high-quality videos and animation. Made by some of the world’s most talented creators, all content is licensed for free.
Videvo
Free to use for both personal and commercial productions, Videvo offers a huge array of videos. However, clips that carry the Creative Commons 3.0 license must be attributed to the original author.
videvo.net/stock-video-footage
Mockups
Shotsnapp
Just choose a device, add your image, make the tweaks you want, then download your mockup image. It’s like a photo editor and mockup maker all rolled into one.
Smartmockups
Not just computers, tablets and phones this mockup library has loads of products you can stamp your mark on.
Mockup World
With claims of being the biggest source of free photorealistic mockups online, Mockup World is full to the brim with free, easily customisable, ready to use photorealistic PSDs.
With these tools your business will be looking better than ever in no time. All it takes is a clear vision of what your business looks and feels like, and with some dedication to maintaining that theme you’ve got yourself a brand. Check you out!
However, if you’d like the professionals to help you out, get in touch with our design team at Colour in Media who are seasoned designers with decades of experience. www.colourinmedia.com
We’d love to hear how you got on and which of these free resources you loved the most so let us know in the comments below!
