15 Best, Mostly Free Design Resources: After Curating Over 1,500 Tools
What are the best, mostly free design resources of all time?
Over the years, I’ve explored countless design tools and resources, sifting through tenth of thousands of tools and featuring over 1,500 of these resources on Toools.design to bring you the very best. Whether you’re a seasoned digital designer or just starting out, the right resources at your fingertips can be game-changing.
In this post, I’ll highlight the 15 best free design resources that have consistently proven their worth and are the most searched, clicked, and favored by the Toools.design community.
Inspiration
Mobbin (Paid but worth it!)
Mobbin is a treasure trove of mobile and web app design inspiration. It showcases a vast collection of screenshots from top companies, making it an excellent resource for staying up-to-date with current trends and finding new ideas for your own projects.
Behance (Free)
Behance is one of the most well-known platforms for creative professionals to showcase their work. It’s an excellent place to find inspiration across a variety of design disciplines, from graphic design and illustration to web and UI/UX design.
Logobook (Free)
For logo design inspiration, Logobook is an indispensable resource. It features an extensive gallery of logos from various industries, filterable by letters, numbers, even shapes, and more, providing a wealth of ideas for creating unique and memorable logos.
For much more inspiration resources check out our blog post: Ultimate List: 100 Best Inspiration Sites to Inspire Designers.
Mockups
Mockup World (Free)
Mockup World provides an impressive selection of free high-quality mockups. The diverse selection across various categories makes it easy to present your websites, mobile apps, or print and branding materials professionally.
MockupPhotos (Free)
MockupPhotos offers a wide range of free mockups that are perfect for showcasing your designs. Whether you need mockups for websites, mobile apps, or print materials, you’ll find thousands of options to suit your needs.
Stock Photos
Unsplash (Free)
Unsplash is one of the best sources for free, high-resolution stock photos. With a vast library of images contributed by talented photographers, you can find beautiful and unique photos for any project.
Pixabay (Free)
Pixabay offers a large collection of free stock photos, illustrations, vector graphics, videos, music, and effects . It’s a great alternative to paid stock sites, providing high-quality royalty free assets for personal and commercial use.
Illustrations
unDraw (Free)
unDraw provides a collection of open-source vector illustrations that you can use for free in your projects. The illustrations are constantly updated and cover a wide range of topics, making it easy to find the perfect visual for your design needs.
Pixels Market (Free)
Pixels Market by Manypixels is an excellent resource for finding free illustrations. It offers a wide variety of styles and subjects, ensuring you can find the perfect illustration for your project, whether it’s for web design, marketing, or branding.
Icons
Google Material Symbols (Free)
Google Material Symbols offers a large collection of icons based on Google’s Material Design guidelines. These icons are highly versatile and can be used across web and mobile applications to maintain a consistent and professional look.
Lucide (Free)
Lucide is an open-source project and a fork of the formerly popular Feather Icons, offering a comprehensive collection of over 1,400 customizable icons in various styles.
Fonts
DaFont (Free)
For decades, DaFont has been a popular resource for free fonts. It offers a vast selection of typefaces in various styles, from classic to modern, ensuring you can find the perfect font for any project.
Colors
Color Hunt (Free)
ColorHunt is a fantastic resource for discovering beautiful color palettes. Whether you’re starting a new project or looking to refresh an existing design, ColorHunt’s expertly curated collections can help you find the perfect color combination.
Best Practices & Knowledge
Laws of UX (Free)
Laws of UX is an essential resource for understanding the principles of user experience design. It provides a comprehensive overview of key UX laws and how to apply them in your projects to create intuitive and effective designs.
Growth·Design (Free)
Growth.Design offers insightful case studies and articles that explore the psychology and strategy behind successful design. Their content is engaging and educational, making complex design principles easy to understand and apply in your own projects.
Bonus: Website Builder
Webflow (Free with Webflow domain)
Webflow is a powerful website builder that I’ve personally used to create Toools.design. It combines the ease of a visual editor with the flexibility of custom code, allowing for stunning and responsive designs without needing extensive coding knowledge.
Framer (Free with Framer domain)
Framer is another cutting-edge website builder I tried that allows you to create fully responsive and visually stunning websites with ease. With Framer, you can craft professional-quality websites without writing a single line of code.
Check out Webflow vs Framer in 2024: An Honest and In-Depth Comparison to discover which of the two best suits your needs.
Wrapping it up
After years of exploring and curating design resources, I’ve found these 15 tools to be the most valuable for digital designers. Whether you’re looking for inspiration, mockups, stock photos, illustrations, icons, free fonts, colors, best practices, or website builders, these resources will help you create and present stunning and effective designs. I hope you find them as useful as I have in your own design journey. Happy designing!
