Design
Resources

For everything a freelance designer needs: podcasts to inspire, articles to educate, tools to streamline your workflow, and much more. From finding clients to mastering new skills, find the resources you need to thrive as a freelancer.

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
Design Assets

NEUE STORE

Unlock the full potential of your next design project with exceptional range of Webflow templates and high-quality mockups. Specially curated to meet the demands of modern designers, the Webflow templates are fully customizable, responsive, and built to convert.

Podcast

The Design of Business

How design works within complex organizations to shape decisions, products, and more. Guests include clients from many industries and designers in many fields.

Podcast

The Honest Designer Show

"The Honest Designer Show" is a podcast that provides a transparent look into the life of modern designers and offers advice on how to make a difference in the creative industry. Hosted by Tom Ross, Ian Barnard, Dustin Lee, and Lisa Glanz, the podcast is praised for its genuine and valuable conversations.

Design Assets

Behance.net

http://behance.net/ is a website for design assets where you can find creative work you love.

Inspirations

One Page Love

One Page Love is a website that provides design inspiration and assets for creating visually appealing and user-friendly one-page websites.

Design Assets

Pexels

Pexels offers free high-quality photos and videos to promote better designs for all. Their collection is extensive and of great quality.

Profile Editing

Offset

Offset offers royalty-free but paid images created by artists, including food photography and scenic landscapes, for use by magazines and large corporations.

Illustrations

Drawkit

Drawkit offers a collection of free and paid customizable vector illustrations for print and digital projects, with paid options starting at $29.

Illustrations

Humaaans

Humaaans is a free design asset that allows you to customize illustrations of humans in different contexts, created by Pablo Stanley.

Design Assets

Vexels

Vexels offers high-quality vector graphics in various styles and sizes, including custom designs. Pricing starts at $7.50/month for freelancers.

Podcast

99% Invisible

99% Invisible is a popular podcast that explores unnoticed designs and architecture that shape our world and experience. It covers the origins of objects and fascinating stories of people behind these designs. Episodes are also available in print.

Podcast

Design Matters

Design Matters is a podcast featuring interviews with creative icons such as designers, writers, artists, and musicians.

Podcast

User Defenders

User Defenders is a podcast featuring interviews with UX experts who share their stories of defending users. Listeners can learn from the experiences of designers who have made a career out of advocating for users.

Podcast

UI Breakfast

UI Breakfast is a podcast featuring interviews with designers and experts who provide practical tips and insights on career growth, design style, focus, and leadership.

Design Assets

Flaticon

Flaticon is a website that offers millions of free icons.

Podcast

Creative Pep Talk

If you're feeling stuck in your creative career, the Creative Pep Talk podcast offers thousands of hacks and tactics to help you make a breakthrough in any field.

Design Assets

The Noun Project

The Noun Project is a resource of icons from around the world, designed to create a visual language for everyone. Icons are royalty-free but require attribution unless you have a paid NounPro account.

Design Assets

Behance

Behance is an online design platform owned by Adobe that offers a diverse range of creative inspiration and allows users to discover and share designs.

Design Assets

Httpster

Httpster is a free website that offers curated collections of beautiful website designs for inspiration.

Design Assets

Niice

Niice is a platform for design teams to collect and share inspiration, similar to Pinterest. It is easy to use and allows for feedback and collaboration.

Design Tools

Adobe Color

Adobe Color is a tool that allows users to explore color trends, create palettes from images, and save color schemes to Adobe apps.

Learn

Typewolf

Typewolf is a website that offers a collection of lookbooks, recommendations, blog posts, and typography guides to inspire designers with trending fonts and designs.

Design Tools

Adobe Online Photo Editing

Adobe offers cloud-based image editing tools that can be accessed through your browser or smartphone, including the well-known Adobe Photoshop.

Design Assets

GIMP

GIMP is a free and open-source image editor that provides all the necessary image manipulation tools for graphic designers, photographers, and illustrators.

Design Tools

Pixlr

Pixlr is a photo editing tool that allows retouching, filtering, adjusting, and drawing on photos in a browser or mobile device. The basic version is free, but the paid PixlrPro account offers more features such as templates, fonts, and browser compatibility.

Design Assets

Shotsnapp

Shotsnapp is a web-based app for creating and sharing mockup images for app or website design. It is easy and straightforward to use for all digital projects.

Design Assets

Pixeden

Pixeden is a resource for graphic design templates, offering both premium and free options. With a wide selection of high quality templates, users can choose from objects, backgrounds, textures, and fonts to create mockups that showcase their brand ideas effectively.

Learn

Skillshare

Skillshare offers a wide variety of classes to improve design skills or try new things, making it easy and accessible to learn about a new craft like book cover design.

Design Assets

Collabshot

Collabshot is a free desktop app that allows for selective capture, editing, and sharing of screenshots. It is designed to facilitate team collaboration.

Podcast

The Futur Podcast

The Futur Podcast, led by CEO and Founder Chris Do, covers design, business, and marketing topics, providing professional insights on graphic design and the industry's business side. It aims to inspire new designers and design veterans to break through creative blocks.

Podcast

Design Better

The Design Better podcast features conversations with design leaders who share their secrets to success, including insights on team cooperation, empathy for users, and design thinking. Hosted by Eli Woolery and Aarron Walter, the show is presented by InVision.

Podcast

Clever

The Clever podcast offers candid and in-depth conversations with design leaders about their childhood dreams, career journeys, successes, and future plans, making it a go-to show for those interested in the design of objects and environments that shape our lives.

Podcast

School of Motion Podcast

The School of Motion Podcast is a great resource for motion designers, featuring in-depth conversations that provide professional, informative, and candid content. While it may not teach specific effects, it's a great resource for those new to the field to learn about freelancing, portfolio building, and creativity.

Podcast

The Crazy One

"The Crazy One" is a podcast hosted by Stephen Gates, a global design leader and Founder of CRZY strategy, that offers encouragement and support for those pursuing a design career.

Podcast

The Honest Designers

The Honest Designers podcast features four expert hosts discussing design work, sharing tips and insights, and answering questions on topics such as work-life balance, getting users' attention, and coping with creative burnout.

Learn

Pexels

Pexels is a top free stock photo site with a community of photographers and videographers who donate their work. It's known for being responsive to current affairs, providing timely images for projects. All content is royalty-free.

Design Assets

StockSnap

StockSnap is a website offering high-quality free stock images with a wide range of categories to choose from. No credit is required but appreciated.

Design Assets

Nappy

Nappy is a free stock photo site that offers high-quality photos of black and brown people, with the aim of promoting diversity and inclusivity in creative work.

Design Assets

Unsplash

Unsplash is a stock photo site with a friendly community of photographers who upload free stock photos for download and use, making it a must-visit for designers.

Icons

Icons8

Icons8's Photo Creator allows users to combine different stock photos to create unique images using a browser-based drag-and-drop interface. Users can add filters to their search and even upload their own images.

Illustrations

Open Peeps

Open Peeps is an open-source illustration library created by Pablo Stanley, offering hand-drawn flat SVG and PNG assets for Sketch, Figma, Studio, and XD. Donations to support the project are also accepted.

Design Assets

unDraw

unDraw is an open-source illustration project featuring beautiful SVG images that can be used for free and without attribution. Created by Katerina Limpitsouni, the project allows users to quickly add their own hex code to tailor the illustrations to their own projects.

Illustrations

Storytale

Storytale is a stock illustration site that offers a subscription service, but also has a selection of free illustrations available under the 'Freebies' tab.

Icons

Ionicons

Ionicons are a collection of premium icons designed for use in web, iOS, Android, and desktop apps. They are free and open source, and were created by the Ionic Framework team.

Icons

simple icon

Simple Icons is a website that provides free SVG icons for popular brands. Created by Dan Leech, the icons are available for download at no cost.

Icons

Animaticons

Animaticons is a collection of high-resolution animated GIFs that can be customized and are compatible with major browsers, emails, and smartphones. They are small in file size and do not require any special plugins or libraries.

Icons

icons8

Icons8 is a website that offers a library of free icons in PNG and SVG formats. They have a "coronavirus related searches" section for current events.

Design Assets

Mixkit

Mixkit is a curated gallery of high-quality videos and animations made by talented creators, with all content licensed for free.

Design Assets

Coverr

Coverr is a source of free, beautifully shot stock videos that can be downloaded for commercial and non-commercial use without attribution.

Design Assets

Life of Vids

Life of Vids provides free videos for web designers, filmmakers, advertisers, and agencies. The videos can be used for personal and commercial purposes, and most of them can be looped infinitely.

Design Tools

Adobe Express

Adobe Express, formerly known as Adobe Spark, is a free, condensed version of Adobe's Creative Cloud offering. It is a great graphic design tool for both experienced designers and beginners, with handy templates and quick actions to make designing easier.

Design Tools

Fontjoy

Fontjoy is a tool that uses deep learning to generate new and original font pairings, allowing designers to easily switch up their usual typeface combinations and try something new. The editable text feature allows for practical application with client names or other copy.

Design Assets

Piktochart

Piktochart is a free web-based design platform primarily used for creating infographics, presentations, and videos. With the use of templates, users can quickly create professional-looking infographics to make their data more visually appealing.

Design Assets

Inkscape

Inkscape is a free, open-source vector graphics software that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux. Created by a non-profit organization, it is a professional quality software.

Design Assets

Blender

Blender is a free, open source 3D creation suite that supports all 3D needs, including modeling, animation, rendering, and game creation. It is a great tool for designers looking to enter the world of 3D design.

Design Assets

Coolors

Coolors is a free colour palette generator that can quickly create a colour palette from your chosen colour. It's available as an app on both iOS and Android, as well as a Figma plugin and Chrome extension.

Design Assets

Brandpad

Brandpad is a free cloud-based tool that helps designers create strong brand guidelines, from asset creation to sharing and usage in one place. The platform's neutral branding doesn't interfere with the designer's own visual work.

Design Assets

VistaCreate

VistaCreate is a free online graphic design platform that offers templates, audio, an asset library, and easy animation to help create social media content for platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok.

Design Tools

Seamless Studio

Seamless Studio is a free AI tool for graphic designers that uses artificial intelligence to automatically create top quality mockups for design projects, freeing up more time for creativity.

Design Tools

Genius’s free Figma plugin Diagram

Genius's free Figma plugin Diagram is an AI tool that streamlines repetitive, time-consuming tasks for graphic designers, freeing up more time for creativity.

Podcast

The Observatory

Michael Bierut and Jessica Helfand of Design Observer discuss design, current events, and current enthusiasms.

Design Tools

Rytr

Rytr is a free AI writing tool for graphic designers that allows them to generate copy quickly for various purposes such as magazine articles and brand stories. The free plan allows for up to 10,000 characters per month.

Design Tools

Nightcafe

Nightcafe is a free AI image generation tool for graphic designers, named after a painting by Vincent Van Gogh. The company aims to democratize art creation and make it accessible to everyone.

Podcast

Clever

Clever is a podcast that explores the human side of design, featuring candid conversations with designers, visionaries, and culture-makers who shape our world. Hosted by Amy Devers, the show delves into the authentic and surprising details of their creative paths.

Stock

Moose

Moose offers a wide range of stock photos, including people, ethnicity, style, fashion, and backgrounds. The website has a handy category list and search box to help you find what you need.

Stock

StockSnap

StockSnap offers a great range of free stock imagery and continues to expand. Beauty and nature photographs are currently popular among the creative community.

Design Assets

Freelmages

Freelmages is a website that offers royalty-free photographs that can be searched by subject, photographer, or camera. All images are available for free and can be used for personal or commercial purposes.

Design Assets

Burst

Burst is a resource from Shopify that offers free, high-resolution images for various categories including fitness, beauty, business, sign language, nature, textures, and backgrounds.

Stock

New Old Stock

New Old Stock is a website that offers vintage photos from public archives that are free of known copyright restrictions. The aim is to recapture history and provide access to black and white photos of cityscapes and portraits from another era.

Stock

Free Nature Stock

Free Nature Stock is a royalty-free CC0 resource for nature stock photos and videos, created by Adrian Pelletier, a graphic designer and front-end developer.

Stock

ISO

ISO is a website that offers thousands of high-resolution stock images and videos for free. It has a wide range of categories, including people, food, travel, and animals.

Design Assets

Pond5

Pond5 offers free footage and audio for use on websites or design projects, with a wide selection available.

Design Assets

Uppbeat

Uppbeat offers free music for creators with no copyright claims and features tracks from popular beatmakers. Users can save their favorite tracks, see what's trending, and listen to the website community's top picks.

Design Assets

Coverr

Coverr is a website that offers free stock video footage with an excellent selection of clips for the creative community. It promises to have videos for every need and has been one of the original sites in this category.

Design Assets

Vimeo

Vimeo offers a collection of 258 free HD stock footage videos donated by nearly 30,000 community members, available for download and use for any purpose.

Design Assets

Cute stock footage

Cute Stock Footage offers over 4,000 clips of VFX, light leaks, overlays, backgrounds, and more for download.

Design Assets

Bensound

Bensound offers a variety of free-to-use tracks, but users must credit the website and cannot use the tracks for audiobooks, podcasts, or song-making. It is important to read the terms and conditions carefully.

Stock

MixKit

MixKit is a free library of stock music tracks, sound effects, and stock video that is updated weekly with new content from creators worldwide.

Design Assets

Videvo

Videvo offers both paid and free sound effects, including police sirens, gunshots, rain, and wind, to enhance design projects.

Illustrations

Undraw

Undraw provides illustrations of people in different scenarios to enhance design projects. The website also offers a color image generator to match the illustrations to a brand's identity.

Design Assets

Drawkit

DrawKit provides free and premium illustrations, hand-drawn vectors, and icons for your projects. Premium packs start at $10, and the site is updated weekly.

Design Assets

Pimp my Drawing

Pimp my Drawing is a free library of CAD drawings of people created by three architecture students who wanted to share their vector scale models with the world.

Illustrations

Lukasz Adam

Lukasz Adam offers free SVG illustrations for commercial and personal use under the CC0 license, with no attribution required.

Illustrations

Open peeps

Open Peeps is a hand-drawn illustration library created by Pablo Stanley that allows users to mix and match different characters and elements to create unique illustrations. The assets can be used in Blush and are suitable for all occasions.

Illustrations

Free illustrations

Freeillustrations.xyz is a curated web resource offering a nice selection of free illustrations for designers, including artworks on themes such as sneakers and transport, retro vectors, and helpful icons.

Illustrations

Pixabay

Pixabay offers a wide selection of free illustrations, stock photos, vectors, videos, music, and sound effects. The website has grown significantly since its launch and users can sign up to become members.

Icons

Simple icons

Simple Icons is a collection of free SVG icons for popular brands, founded by Dan Leech. With 2,141 icons available for download, it's a valuable resource for designers.

Illustrations

Open doodles

Open Doodles is a collection of free illustrations that can be copied, edited, remixed, shared, or redrawn for any purpose without copyright or database law restrictions. It is a resource created by Pablo Stanley.

Illustrations

Absurd

Absurd Design offers free and upgradeable illustrations for various design needs, created by Diana Valeanu and gaining attention in the design community worldwide.

Icons

Ionicons

Ionicons is a collection of over 1,300 open-source icons designed for use in web, iOS, Android, and desktop apps. They are free and open source, and were created by the Ionic Framework team.

Icons

Icons Icons

Icons Icons is a website that offers free icons and icon sets for commercial use, including flat icons. It provides a wide range of options for different project themes.

Icons

Free Icons

Free Icons is a website with a large database of free icons available in various formats including PNG, SVG, EPS, PSD, and BASE 64.

Icons

Iconscouts

Iconscouts offers a collection of free, royalty-free icons of decent quality for commercial use, including arrows, device icons, and transport graphics.

Icons

Flaticons

Flaticons offers over 2,400 royalty-free flat icons on various themes, as well as a flat icon maker for creating custom icons.

Icons

Animaticons

Animaticons is a great resource for high-resolution animated GIFs that can be customized and are compatible with all major browsers, emails, and smartphones. They are small in file size and don't require any special plugins or libraries.

Icons

Font awesome

Font Awesome is a website with a wide range of icons for design projects, including some 'Pro Only' options for paying members.

Design Assets

Font fabric

FontFabric is a type foundry that creates retail fonts and custom typography for brands, and also offers free fonts for download. Popular fonts include Nexa and Mont Blanc, with many more available on their website.

Design Assets

1001 Free Fonts

1001 Free Fonts offers loads of free fonts for personal use, and for commercial use, you can download 10,000 fonts for just $20. While the website design may not be the best, the quality of fonts such as Bodoni and Pine Tree is impressive.

Icons

Icon

Iconmonstr is a free resource for icons, with options for both heavyweight and lightweight designs. Users can even suggest icons to be made next by the founder, Alexander Kahlkopf, a senior designer from Germany with over 15 years of experience in icon design.

Design Assets

Google Fonts

Google Fonts is a directory of open source web fonts available for designers to use as they wish, created to high standards by the world's largest search engine.

get early access to layers

Ready to start your freelance career?

Layers isn't just about creating a stunning portfolio. It's a one-stop shop for all your freelance needs. Here's a glimpse of what's coming soon:

Join Waitlist
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
By clicking “Accept All Cookies”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information.
PreferencesDenyAccept