We’re talking about free graphic design resources, the secret weapon in any graphic designer’s toolbox.

Graphic design professionals do a lot of conceptualising on their own. However they require some help in trying to get things done quickly. For example the designer might need a texture pattern or brush or some sort of vector that needs to be incorporated into a design. The web is full of resources, so below are some links to some resources that I found online that you can use now.

I will also put some things that I have collected over the years, for example textures that I created from photos and use for my own designs. There are many places to get textures brushes and other design resources but most places you require you to pay for the resource. There are places where you can find good stuff for free. It is better to get things for free, however free things are not always good. You may spend a lot of time trying to find the right design for your idea, but you may find it might be better paying for a high quality version.

Joe Miller from The Expanse. “Too many dots not enough lines” I used a photoshop brush set called “Nagel Pencil series” that I found on DeviantArt.

Stock photography sites provide a great place to get good textures and vectors. However you have to be careful that you don’t spend money unnecessarily. There are sites which require you to pay for credit. Some designers prefer to do this, I however, believe that it is a waste of money. My experience has been that I will always have credit leftover, and there is no way to spend all of the credit on any one item. You’ll have to keep topping up in order to buy another image. In reality you spend more In the long term. If you know you going to be downloading a lot of imagery or vectors then a subscription service might be better for you. I will list some of the better the subscription services below.

You can make your own textures, as well as brushes from Photoshop. Adobe has made it even easier for you to create your own textures, brushes and vectors through their new app Adobe Capture. You can download it here. Please note you will need a Creative Cloud account to fully make use of it.

Free graphic design resources

Vectors

Brushes

Textures

You can download my FREE textures here:

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or you can find more free textures at any of these sites:

Stock Photos

There are four FREE Stock photo sites that I have used and recommend.

NOT SO Free graphic design resources

Stock Photos & Vectors In no particular order.

You sign up and pay a fee or pay per image. Some images cost a hefty sum for the rights to use, especially those labelled “For editorial use only”. These prices range between US$50 to over US$1,000 per image depending on usage. Getty has a nice deal where you can embed the image on your website and it is watermarked and links back to Getty, if you run a news site you can use this feature with proper credit.

Shutterstock and GettyImages’s istockphoto, as well as Dreamstime offer vector images you can buy and download ready to use in Illustrator or any vector capable application.

BONUS

Many of us in the Caribbean suffer from finding images that don’t suit our market. That is to say, you don’t see “people like you.” Coastcaribbeanimages.com is there to help. I have personally never used it, and the downside of using a site like this might be the licensing and the cost.

UPDATE

I found this great link to 21 Websites To Download Culturally Diverse Stock Photos have a look and see if you can use any of these. If you have leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts.

This is a good start. I hope you found this post on free graphic design resources helpful. If you use my my resources it would be nice for you to share on my Facebook page, on Twitter or Instagram using the #Reiddesigns tag saying where you used it.

As always I am available for Freelance design work so if you’d like to hire me for your design projects please use the contact form and get in touch. Happy designing!