Free freelancer graphic design resources

Graphic design resources are an absolute necessity across several areas of freelance digital marketing. While it may seem that such resources are limited to images, there are dozens of resource types that will come handy across a variety of projects. If you do Social Media or Email Marketing, you certainly need stock images – but also templates showing you the dimensions of posts by social media as well icons for your mailers. Likewise, if you are a freelance website developer, you will likely need placeholder images to present design mock-ups, as well as buttons and other navigation elements for the final result. Keep reading this article for our recommendation of the best pages to get FREE freelance graphic design resources. We break these resources down in the following sections:

Freelance graphic design resources
Image via Balázs Kétyi on Unsplash

What are graphic design resources?

Graphic Design is the art of communicating through visual content, including fonts and typography. It is a wide area with several concentrations (read more about Graphic Design as a creative career here). You may relate graphic design to posters and advertising – these are certainly a part of graphic design, but this field covers a many other areas. A business logo and business cards, a website’s landing page, infographics, product labels, and mobile app interfaces all require good graphic design. And good graphic design requires great element that will help you with the task and save you time and money.

10 sites with FREE freelance graphic design resources

1. Canva

Freelance graphic design resources - Canva
Image via Canva

Canva will help you become a creative powerhouse with several all-under-one-roof tools. In their own words, “Canva makes designing beautiful creative assets easy for everyone”. You will find so much under one page and under several freelance graphic design resource categories:

Visual Documents Tools

Visual Worksuite
Visual Docs Designer
Presentations
Online Whiteboard Tool
Online PDF Editor
Graphs and Chart Maker

Photos and Video Solutions

Online Video Editor
Online YouTube Video Editor
Online Photo Editor
Online Photo Collage Maker

Marketing Material Templates

Logos and Logo Creator
Online Poster Designer
Flyers Designer
Brochure Designer
Social Media Templates
Website Creator
Stickers Designer and Print Solutions

Canva is truly a creative goldmine with so much to offer – and so much of it free!

2. Unsplash

freelance graphic design resources - unsplash
Image via Unsplash

Unsplash.com offers you a huge range of free stock images. This is not restricted to photos (which come in a vast variety of themes and subjects), but also includes Editorial images, wallpapers, and 3D renders, and several other freelance graphic design resources.

3. Pexels

freelance graphic design resources - Pexels
Image via Pexels

Pexels.com offers you a vast selection of freelance graphic design resources, including stock images and videos for you to download and use in your personal and professional projects. The variety of subjects is comprehensive, and it is organized by tags, collections, or discoverable via a search.

4. Pixabay

freelance graphic design resources - pixabay
Image via Pixabay

Pixabay.com is very similar in its offering to Pexels (fun fact: they started as competing sites, now they both belong to Canva). Its library includes freelance graphic design resources such as stock images, illustrations and vectors, video, as well as music and sound effects.

5. Freepik

freelance graphic design resources - freepik
Image via Freepik

We would be silly not to include Freepik here. It offers a gigantic library of freelance graphic design resources, namely free stock vectors, illustrations, and images. Thousands of these are offered for free, but there is also premium content accessible via one of their affordable subscription plans. If you only want to see the free stuff, make sure to use their handy filter to hide the premium content.

6. Flaticon

freelance graphic design resources - flaticon
Image via Flaticon

This page is actually a sister site of Freepik. It offers thousands and thousands of free icons and stickers for your personal and professional project. Same as above, several thousands are free to download, but you will also see premium assets while browsing. You can simply use a filter to just display the free ones.

7. Graphic Burger

freelance graphic design resources - Graphic Burger
Image via GraphicBurger

This page is unique in that it offers compilations of free freelance graphic design resources like no other. Mockups, icons, design and logo templates, text effects, textures…. You can lose yourself in all that they make available to people in need of free creative assets!

8. Vecteezy

freelance graphic design resources - vecteezy
Image via Vecteezy

Vecteezy.com offers hundreds of thousands of free stock vectors and clipart graphics, as well as stock photos. They are also behind the ever-useful Videezy.com, which focuses on stock video. However, it appears that their pages are now centralized to offer you a one-stop-shop where you can download several of their assets without leaving the page (we see videos offered directly on Vecteezy, for example!). They also offer a Pro subscription plan, which expands their freelance graphic design resources library and allows you to download some amazing asset mega bundles.

9. Design Bundles

freelance graphic design resources - Design Bundles
Image via DesignBundles

Designbundles.net does not focus solely on free assets – but they do have a section of free downloads, which includes stock graphics, templates, fonts, and other freelance graphic design resources.

10. Behance

freelance graphic design resources - Behance
Image via Behance

Behance is the outlier on this list as it is mainly a platform to build and display your creative portfolio online. However, it also offers freelance graphic design resources, including mockups, icons, etc. You just need to know what to search for (we recommend putting “free icons” in the search bar to get started!).


We hope that you found this article where we list 10 pages with free freelance graphic design resources useful. Make the most out of them for all your personal and creative projects – however, one more thing. Most of the stock assets that are offered for free in the pages we listed above (and overall, on the internet) do not have a royalty-free license. They usually come with one of the several attribution licenses that exist out there (for example, Creative Commons 3.0.). This means that while you are fully allowed to use these assets for personal or commercial purposes, you must provide an attribution to the author or source as instructed by each page. For the sources that do offer paid subscriptions, becoming a paid user makes all the assets you get access to royalty free material that do not require an attribution. Also, why not read our article covering the different fields of freelance digital marketing jobs available to you as a freelancer?

If you are new to graphic design, we leave you some FAQ for any doubts you may have!

Graphic Design FAQ’s

What resources do you need for graphic design?

There are several types of resources that are useful for graphic design resources. These include stock images, vectors, illustrations, motion graphics, and video. Additional resources include templates, typography, logo presets, and any other assets that will save you time and money in your personal and professional graphic design projects.

What are the 7 types of graphic design?

According to Berkley College, the 7 types of graphic design are grouped as follows: Web Design, UI and Interactive Design, Advertising and Marketing Design, Motion Graphics and Animation, Packaging Design, Game Design, Illustration, as well as Publication and Typographic Design.

What are the 12 rules of graphic design?

These are not rules per-se, but principles. The 12 principles of graphic designs are as follows: Variety and Unity, Movement, White Space, Pattern, Rhythm, Repetition, Hierarchy, Proportion, Emphasis, Balance, and Contrast.

What are the 4 C’s of graphic design?

This term refers to Graphic Design when applied to UX design, and it is: Consistency, Continuity, Context, And Complementary.

Cover Image via NordWood Themes  on Unsplash

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