Everyone loves free stuff, right? From posh swag bags to ball game t-shirt cannons, freebies can run the gamut from smash to trash. From the thousands of links populating my Twitter feed every day, these sources constantly stand out by providing roundups of quality free downloads on a regular basis. Whether you’re looking for new, responsive WordPress themes or a selection of PSD logo mockup templates (as I used to create the Free Stuff graphic above), the following 13 design resources have you covered. Follow a Twitter feed, like a Facebook page, or sign up for an email newsletter from the sites listed here, and elevate your designs without emptying your wallet.
1. Chris Spooner – Blog.SpoonGraphics
Chris Spooner is a madman. The amount of quality free stuff he offers through his blog on a weekly basis is outstanding. Freebies include retro vector collections, Photoshop actions & brushes, patterns & textures, customizable mockup templates, fonts, and graphic tutorials containing all the necessary elements. Couple that with the fact that he’ll send you a download link to his design resources bundle just for subscribing to his mailing list, and you have the first must-visit site on the list.
2. Creative Bloq
The folks at Creative Bloq are also a generous bunch. They offer a free Font of the Day, monstrous collections of thousands of design resources, customizable templates & UI kits, Photoshop brushes & actions, and design ebooks & magazines, among other things. Their Twitter feed is also populated with resources, articles, and design inspiration, so follow up!
3. Speckyboy
Speckyboy Design Magazine rocks, offering up a wide range of free font collections, along with lots of textures, mockup templates, and vector packs. They tweet design news, tools, resources, and inspiration every couple of hours as well, making their Twitter feed a must-follow. 58K followers can’t be wrong!
4. Bashooka
Bashooka also rocks. As best I can tell it’s just one really active dude, with a killer Twitter feed and a dedicated freebie section on the website. Bashooka’s free resource collections include everything from UI kits, stock photos & backgrounds, design tools, and fonts to PSD mockup templates, icon sets, and many WordPress themes.
5. DesignWoop
To kick off 2014 in style, DesignWoop started offering a monthly collection of Design Freebies for Creatives. These roundups include a ton of product & identity mockup templates, icon collections, PSD website templates, fonts, photos, and backgrounds. DesignWoop has a newsletter as well, and occasionally offer up some killer giveaways. There’s also lots of design inspiration to be found in their Twitter feed.
6. ManageWP Blog
ManageWP publishes a fantastic WordPress blog, but the real juice is in their expertly curated collections of Top 5 Themes of the Month and Top 10 Plugins of the Month. I have culled many free WordPress themes and plugins from their lists for use on my own sites, and always look forward to their kickass monthly suggestions.
Elevate your designs without emptying your wallet.
7. Designer Ledger
You can find another dedicated freebies section on Designer Ledger, offering up fonts, icons, textures, and PSD files. The site also has a very clean menu breakdown of additional design inspiration (advertisements, business cards, logos, web design), resources (plugins, templates, themes, tools), and tutorials containing a whole lot more gratis goodness.
8. Creative Market
Creative Market is “a platform for handcrafted, mousemade design content from independent creatives around the world.” While most of these amazing goods are up for purchase, and rightly so, they also offer super-high quality Free Goods of the Week, curated from the many talented designers displaying their wares on the site. Simply sign up for a free account to take advantage of these weekly free & awesome handcrafted logos, fonts, ribbons, badges, themes, and much more. You’ll likely find yourself lost within the site for hours, stocking up on all sorts of other fantastic design elements, as I have on many occasions!
9. Vectorstock
Vectorstock is a widely known royalty free vector art and stock images site, but with a free account you can also access 100’s of pages of free vectors from every category under the sun. If you can sort through the cheesy clipart you’ll turn up some gems. It’s best to reference the number of downloads so you’re not beating a commonly used vector to death.
10. WPMU DEV
WPMU DEV offers up many WordPress freebies, mostly featuring themes and plugins. Their theme roundups are large and thorough, and usually grouped into categories, such as responsive and minimalist. They also offer articles and tips on how to select a good free theme, and what to watch out for.
11. WP Tavern
If you’re looking for a dedicated WordPress site, belly up to the WP Tavern. You’ll find most of the freebies within their extensive free WordPress theme roundups, but they also offer informative weekly interviews and discussions on a wide variety of current WordPress issues. A WordPress.org page serves up version news & updates.
12. Pixel77
These guys offer up much more than 77 pixels worth of goodness. They run a Free Vector of the Day feature (insert pixel joke here) that’s well into the 500’s, and have a resources section with freebies such as Must-Read Free eBooks for Graphic Designers. They also provide monthly tutorial roundups on Photoshop, Illustrator, and web design.
13. WP101 Resources
And last but not least (ok, least), I offer you my personal Twitter feed, as well as the resources section here on WordPress 101. I tweet a healthy selection of design news, graphics articles, and of course WordPress goodies, among other things, with much of it coming from the fabulous sources above. If you’re looking for a daily summary of this summary, you could do worse.
Please make sure to check the various usage licenses for any of the freebies you intend to use in your work, as to not step on any toes and properly give credit where it’s due. I am not affiliated with any of the sites listed here; just looking to share some design love with the people. Share your favourite design resource sites in the comments and perhaps we can collectively compile an Insane Freebies 2.0 post soon.
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