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Design Resources
I spend all day on the internet, and like to bookmark good resources I find. I try to cull out the dumb stuff and only include links to things I’ve actually used, to make this resource as solid as possible. This list is ever-evolving, so let me know if you want to add something!
Photography + Photo Editing:
CameraSim — Play with camera settings in real-time to learn what the different settings do. Take a picture with the simulator, and get immediate feedback.
Colorcinch – this platform gives you the ability to add filters to your photos to make them look like they’ve been sketched or painted. Kind of like Adobe Photoshop’s Filters tool but without the massive program!
Pixlr — A free online photo editor with advanced tools like layers, masks, and adjustments, making it a lightweight alternative to Photoshop.
Snapseed — Google’s mobile photo editing app, perfect for enhancing images on the go with intuitive controls and pro-level adjustments.
GIMP — Open-source photo editing software with powerful features like retouching, color correction, and layers.
Photoscape X — A user-friendly photo editor that combines filters, cropping tools, and effects into one package.
Exposure X7 — Ideal for photographers seeking film simulation and advanced editing features.
Remove BG — Automatically removes backgrounds from images with AI-powered precision.
Fotor — Offers one-tap editing, beauty touch-ups, and HDR features for stunning photos.
Pexels Edit Studio — Edit your stock photos directly in Pexels with simple adjustments and filters.
Adobe Express — A web-based design tool offering simplified photo editing and graphic creation.
Darktable — A photography workflow application for developing and editing RAW images.
Freelance:
How Much Should I Charge? — Very awesome starter website for freelance designers. Asks you your hourly rate, how much time you’ll spend on the project, and a couple questions to gauge how much you care on it before presenting you with a real number.
Mailjoy — MailChimp for physical mail. Full color direct mail postcard campaign that you can AB test and back up with data.
Freelancers Union — Offers resources like contract templates, legal advice, and health insurance for freelancers.
Millo — A blog with freelancing advice, business tips, and inspiration for creative professionals.
And.Co — Invoicing, time tracking, and task management software tailored for freelancers.
Workew — A curated job board for freelancers focusing on remote opportunities.
Toggl Track — A simple and powerful time-tracking app to monitor productivity and billable hours.
CreativeLive — Online courses for creative professionals, covering business skills, marketing, and design.
Client Portal — A WordPress plugin to help freelancers manage projects and client communication professionally.
Hello Bonsai — Contract, proposal, and invoicing software specifically for freelancers.
Indy — A streamlined platform for project management, time tracking, and invoicing freelancers.
Hourly Rate Calculator — A straightforward tool for calculating your ideal hourly rate based on expenses and goals.
Freebies:
Psddd — Aggregates downloadable free Photoshop files from users on Dribbble.
Free Design Resources — A collection of free fonts, UI kits, icons, and more for designers.
GraphicFuel — Free graphics, PSD templates, and mockups for personal and commercial use.
Unblast — Download free graphic resources like icons, templates, and 3D illustrations.
Speckyboy — Weekly roundups of free design tools, assets, and inspiration.
FontSpace — Download free fonts from a massive directory with categories for every need.
Humaaans — A free library of customizable vector illustrations of people.
Doodly — A collection of free hand-drawn vector illustrations for personal and commercial use.
Infographics:
Infogr.am — Build infographics within a predetermined template. Good if you’re not a trained designer but need something simple and easy. Allows you to embed their graphics in your own content.
Datawrapper — Simple infographic tool. Not very flashy or trendy, but very professional looking, probably good for news outlets.
Canva — Another infographic tool that also allows you to build Facebook cover photos, Instagram and Twitter posts (sizing is crucial with those). Check out their stream to see previous examples and get inspiration, and their Design School has great information for new designers.
Visme — Create engaging infographics with interactive features and animation options.
Venngage — A simple online tool for making professional-looking infographics.
Easel.ly — Easy-to-use platform to make simple, attractive infographics quickly.
Piktochart — Offers infographic templates, charts, and visuals for non-designers.
ChartBlocks — Design charts and embed them in your content with customizable options.
Snappa — A lightweight design tool with infographic templates and graphic elements.
Adobe Express Infographics Maker — Drag-and-drop simplicity with Adobe’s flair for design.
Flourish — Data visualization made easy, with interactive charts and graphs.
AmCharts — Build interactive infographics and visualizations for presentations.
Infographic World — A custom infographic service that also offers templates and tools.
Data Visualization:
7 Most Common Data Vis Mistakes (from TNW News)
Data Visualization Tips from Information is Beautiful (From Journalism.co.uk)
The Quick and Dirty on Data Visualization (from HBR)
Tableau Public — A free platform to create interactive and shareable data visualizations.
Google Data Studio — Connect your data and create customizable, shareable dashboards.
Chart.js — A JavaScript library for creating responsive and interactive charts.
D3.js — A powerful JavaScript library for building custom data visualizations.
RAWGraphs — A free tool to turn spreadsheets into complex and custom visualizations.
Plotly — An open-source library for creating graphs and interactive plots.
Palladio — A web-based platform for visualizing historical data and networks.
Highcharts — A JavaScript library for creating a variety of interactive charts.
Cytoscape — An open-source software platform for visualizing complex networks.
Mockups:
PSD Covers — Free actions to convert almost any flat artwork into a beautiful mockup, all completely free. I could sing about this site from the rooftops!
Placeit.net — Mockups you can make within a browser, no Photoshop required. Prices range from free (tiny image), $8 or $59.
Mockup World — A curated library of free, high-quality mockups for showcasing designs.
Smartmockups — Create browser-based mockups quickly and easily, with a variety of templates.
Mockuuups Studio — A drag-and-drop app to generate stunning mockups for devices and print.
Artboard Studio — A browser-based platform for creating custom, professional mockups.
Mediamodifier — Generate customizable mockups for products, apps, and designs directly in your browser.
Placeit — Quickly create mockups, videos, and logos with minimal effort and no design experience.
MockDrop — A free collection of device mockups for web and app design presentations.
Threed.io — Generate 3D device mockups with a range of customization options.
Graphic Burger Mockups — A variety of free PSD mockups for product design and branding presentations.
Zippy Pixels Mockups — Professional mockups and templates for personal and commercial use.
Maps:
Map Stack — Make your own maps with Stamen
Mapbox — I really love this service, honestly much more than Google Maps. It’s easy to use and easy to customize.
(also, another goodie from Mapbox — use their studio to print large format maps for your walls)
Google My Maps — Customize and annotate your own maps for personal or professional use.
Carto — A powerful platform for creating data-driven, interactive geographic visualizations.
QGIS — Free, open-source software for creating detailed geographic maps and visualizations.
GeoJSON.io — A fast, no-frills tool to create and edit GeoJSON files for mapping.
Atlas of Design — A showcase of beautifully designed maps from around the world.
Natural Earth — High-quality public domain maps and GIS data available at multiple scales.
Leaflet — A lightweight and open-source JavaScript library for building interactive maps.
MapTiler — Customize and host maps on your own servers or integrate them into apps.
HERE Maps — Customizable mapping solutions with advanced location tools.
ArcGIS Online — Industry-leading GIS software for mapping and spatial analysis.
Design Blogs:
Awwwards — Highlights good design and creativity, specifically on the internet.
Typographica — Type reviews, books, commentary. For the true type nerd.
Design Milk — Covers modern design trends across architecture, interiors, products, and graphics.
Creative Bloq — A go-to source for design inspiration, tutorials, and industry news.
Eye on Design — Explores the cultural impact of design and showcases emerging designers.
Abduzeedo — A daily dose of design inspiration and practical tutorials from professionals.
Shillington Design Blog — Features advice, inspiration, and tips for budding designers.
It’s Nice That — Celebrates creativity across disciplines, with interviews and case studies.
Design Shack — Offers articles, resources, and examples of great design work across media.
Creative Boom — Inspires designers with interviews, tips, and trend roundups from the creative world.
Swiss Miss — A curated blog of design inspiration and tools by designer Tina Roth Eisenberg.
Brand New — Focuses on corporate branding and identity work, with detailed critiques.
Inspiration:
Designspiration — Robust collection of all kinds of design pieces, from typography to photography.
Behance — A vast community of creative portfolios, with tons of inspiration across disciplines.
Dribbble — Another community for designers to showcase and explore creative work.
Pinterest — A treasure trove of ideas and inspiration for every design niche.
The Design Inspiration — A curated collection of logos, illustrations, and web designs.
Booooooom — A blog featuring art, design, and photography from up-and-coming creatives.
UX Design Daily — Daily inspiration for user experience and interface design.
Logopond — Inspiration for logo designs and branding concepts.
Design You Trust — Showcases design, art, and creative trends.
Colossal — Highlights the intersection of art, design, and visual culture.
FFFFOUND (Archive) — Though defunct, the archive of this beloved inspiration blog still circulates online.
Fonts + Typography:
Butterick’s Practical Typography — This experiment in online publishing also doubles as one of the best abbreviated educational tools on typography.
Find a Font — A flowchart to help you identify and locate specific fonts for projects
Typester — Compare screen fonts, great tool for web design.
Lost Type co-op: Amazing site that serves fonts on a pay-what-you-want model. This means you can put in $0 and get them for free, but I recommend spending some money, since it goes back to the designer who worked on it.
My Fonts — Massive selection of fonts, they have basically everything and a good search function to boot.
BeauCoup’s Font Guide for All Occasions — If you’re on that font guide hype train and want to dig a little deeper, BeauCoup has an excellent round up of information on fonts, how they’re made, and how they exist in other languages (something I honestly think about quite a bit).
Optimizing Text Readability for Web — Seriously, so important. Kerning and letterspacing on the internet!
Beautiful Web Type — If you look at Google Fonts, you’ll quickly realize there are so many and you’ll never be able to look at them all. These guys catalog their favorites.
Typewolf — A typography blog that lists recommended typefaces and real-world usage examples.
FontPair — Helps you find perfect Google Font pairings for your projects.
Font Squirrel — A library of free, high-quality, hand-picked fonts for commercial use.
WhatFontIs — A tool to identify unknown fonts from images.
FontStruct — Build your own fonts with a user-friendly online editor.
Typekit Practice — Learn the basics of typography with guides and exercises.
Typ.io — Browse font pairings curated from beautiful designs.
DaFont — A huge repository of free fonts for download, including many creative and playful styles.
Fontforge — Free, open-source font editor for creating custom typefaces.
Google Fonts Knowledge — Typography resources and guidelines for web-based typography.
Colors:
Colourlovers — Thousands of user-submitted color palettes. You can search by keyword or pick a specific color and look for palettes that contain it.
The Daily Color — A daily color digest, complete with palette and the song that inspired it.
Color.Hailpixel — This website is really fun! Move your mouse around the hex code changes, pretty random color picker with fun outcomes
Risotto’s Print Simulator – This is sort of color, sort of type, sort of everything. This web app simulates what you print will look like when produced on a Risograph machine. Endlessly fun and educational to play with.
Coolors — A fast and intuitive color palette generator for creative projects.
Adobe Color — Explore and create color schemes with this tool’s wheel and harmony rules.
Color Hunt — A curated collection of beautiful color palettes for inspiration.
Paletton — Explore complementary and analogous color combinations with a dynamic interface.
Happy Hues — A palette library with suggested usage for UI and branding designs.
Colorsinspo — A collection of color palettes, gradients, and tools for inspiration.
Grabient — Quickly create and customize CSS-ready gradients.
Khroma — An AI-based tool that learns your preferences to recommend color palettes.
Pigment by ShapeFactory — Generate harmonious color palettes with smart tools.
Material Palette — Generates color palettes based on Material Design guidelines.
Jobs:
Authentic Jobs — I think this website is for digitally-based designers only
We Work Remotely — Don’t like people? Don’t want to move? Try a remote position.
Smashing Jobs — Hosted by Smashing Magazine, a popular source for creative content
Coworks — Another site for working creative jobs remotely
Working Not Working — A community-focused platform that connects creative talent with top brands.
Toptal — A platform for freelancers to connect with high-profile clients and projects.
99designs — Connects graphic designers with clients for freelance design work.
Dribbble Jobs — A dedicated job board for designers featured on Dribbble.
PeoplePerHour — A platform connecting freelancers with clients for short-term projects.
Creative Circle — A staffing agency specializing in creative and marketing talent.
AngelList — Discover freelance and full-time opportunities at startups and tech companies.
Behance Jobs — Find design-related positions through the Behance platform.
Coroflot — A job board for creatives, including industrial designers, graphic designers, and more.
SimplyHired — A general job board with a robust filter for creative and freelance roles.
Stock Photos:
Stocksy — A paid stock photo website that operates on an artist co-op model. Beautiful and trendy pictures.
Gratisography — Free, and regularly updated high-res stock photos. They’re pretty distinct, so I’d use them sparingly.
Unsplash — Free high-resolution stock photos. They have a great subscription feature, allowing you to get these pictures in your sleep.
Remove.bg – Okay, so you got a stock photo but don’t want to spend time cutting the person out? Try this tool – it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty damn near close.
Pexels — A free stock photo and video platform with high-quality, royalty-free visuals.
Burst by Shopify — Free stock photos tailored for ecommerce businesses.
Picjumbo — A free stock photo platform offering lifestyle and creative photography.
Rawpixel — A mix of free and premium stock photos, vectors, and mockups.
Life of Pix — Free high-resolution photography contributed by photographers worldwide.
Kaboompics — Free stock photos and color palettes perfect for designers.
Reshot — Free stock photos designed to be unique and modern.
Moose — Customizable stock photos from a creative community.
LibreStock — A meta-search engine for finding free stock photos across multiple platforms.
Stockvault — Free photos, textures, and illustrations for personal or commercial projects.
Social Media:
#Tagboard — Search hashtags on social media
Later — A social media scheduling platform with a visual planner to help design and manage your posts.
Buffer — Plan and schedule social media posts while analyzing engagement with intuitive tools.
Hootsuite — A robust social media management platform for scheduling, analytics, and monitoring multiple accounts.
Planoly — Specifically designed for Instagram, Planoly helps you organize your grid and plan content visually.
SocialBee — Offers category-based scheduling for consistent social media posting across multiple platforms.
Tailwind — A scheduling tool with design tips tailored for Pinterest and Instagram.
Linktree — Create a simple landing page to link multiple social profiles and sites.
Hashtagify — Research trending hashtags and monitor their effectiveness on social media.
Bitly — A URL shortener with analytics to track clicks and engagement for your shared links.
Stencil — Quickly create on-brand visuals for social media posts with pre-designed templates.
Icons:
The Noun Project — Massive resource of designer-submitted icons. You can use them for free if you attribute, or pay very little money for a license.
X-Icon Editor — Make favicons for websites!
FlatIcon — Thousands of free icons in multiple formats, including SVG, PNG, and more.
Icons8 — Download free and premium icons in various styles, from flat to 3D.
Material Icons — Google’s official library of Material Design icons.
Feather Icons — A collection of minimal, open-source icons.
Ionicons — Open-source icons specifically crafted for web, iOS, and Android apps.
Heroicons — A library of free SVG icons for modern UI design.
Font Awesome — A font-based library of scalable icons for web and graphic design.
Linea Icons — A set of free outline-style icons for use in various design projects.
Streamline Icons — A premium library of highly customizable icons.
Iconmonstr — A free library of simple and clean icons in multiple formats.
Tutorials:
The difference between Fonts and Typefaces (FastCompany)
Using Shades Correctly (TypeKit)
UX Apprentice — Free web course to discover the world of UX design!
How to Make Double Exposure Photographs
Learning Games:
Shape Type — teaches you to make letters using the pen tool
Bezier Method — learn the pen tool in general. I’ve been using Illustrator for years and this taught even me a thing or two!
Kern.Me — learn to kern letters like a pro
Font Memory Game – Learn to identify and memorize typefaces!
Hex Invaders — Learn hex color codes by shooting invaders matched to their color codes.
Typewar — Test your font-identifying skills by distinguishing between typefaces in rapid succession.
The Pixel Perfect Precision Game — A game focused on improving pixel-perfect alignment in digital design.
Other:
Really Good Emails — A collection of, well, really good email design.
Graphic Burger — A link to their collection of blank mock-ups for various projects.
Template Hierarchy for WordPress — A good, albeit clunky visualization of WordPress’ inner structure.
Screen Sizes — Designing for web? Mobile? What type of operating system or browser? All of those dimensions are here.
Photoshop Etiquette — For some designers, Photoshop is like the wild west, no rules! But if you’re sending a file to someone else to work with, it needs to make sense. Here are some ways to do just that.
Public Speaking Tips—Some notes on strategically using pauses, telling stories, and more.
Font Brief — A tool that helps you articulate font needs and find typefaces that meet them.
Design Principles — A collection of key design principles and examples to guide your creative process.
Lorem Ipsum Generator — Quickly generate placeholder text for design mockups.
Contrast Checker — A tool to ensure your designs meet accessibility standards for color contrast.