so this video is a compilation of the best freebies from 2021 that you can download
and use as a graphic designer make sure to watch each section to familiarize yourself
with how each resource or download actually works and if you've already seen a specific
section from the past on my channel you can just move on to the next one i also have some
important messages at the very end of today's video but until then enjoy the free stuff guys
so sending invoices to clients is important for numerous different reasons firstly you will want
to keep track of how much you are earning in your career so you can then calculate your spending
within the business but also when it comes to calculating tax you would need invoice records to
refer back to at the end of the tax year another important reason for invoicing is to keep track
of who has paid you and who hasn't when you have multiple clients and multiple projects ongoing
at the same time things can get confusing and so having invoices telling you who has paid up and
who hasn't is really really really useful a lot of being a graphic designer is just being organized
but also your clients will often need invoices for their tax records as well
now my free template is a neat way to invoice every single client
professionally where you can put in your info your logo and make minor changes with ease
but you don't sleep on invoicing because you will regret it later in your career
now i often get comments relating to what designers should ask a client
at the start of a project and i've said many times on this channel that the more information
you can gather about a client and their brand the better however i have a very concise and
a very short questionnaire that i personally offer to my clients at the start of a project
you don't want to be sending them questionnaires with 50 questions on them because they're probably
going to be too busy and it will be a tedious task for them to go through the questions on
my questionnaire though are direct and some of them are the most important things you can
find out about a client or the brand these are things that relate to the target market
the unique selling point of the brand and where the logo is going to be received by the end user
feel free to modify the questions and maybe add some more if you want to but this template is
for sure a great starting point for you and your next project with a client the third document is
arguably the most crucial and that is of course the contract now i've shown templates before on
this channel about contracts and my contract today for a logo design project isn't much different
the contract is going to dictate how many revisions the client is entitled to that
you as a designer need a deposit up front before any work is carried out and that's the deposit
is not refundable but also how much you will be paid per hour after all revisions have been used
the contract also protects you from damages relating to the design later down the line
so you cannot be held accountable for how the client will use the design or how that design
impacts their business you are the designer and that's your job you're not there to ensure the
company succeeds so yeah all three documents are essential and i've given you templates linked
down below totally for free be sure to edit them and tailor them to your projects and your business
the first font family is creator display and this is one of my favorite sans serif families
of all time creator display has 14 fonts within the family and just take a look at how sleek and
how modern this looks available in italics and various different font weights this typeface is
awesome on headings on body text and just about anywhere you can think of so you probably know
how much i love the font family lron well this family right here might just rival that top spot
for me as the best sans-serif font family when considering free font downloads anyway but yeah
number two today is dolce vita which is found in three font versions now dolce vita is classy it's
sophisticated and also it's modern there are no lowercase letter forms so this one would be
great on titles and also headings for things like fashion magazines maybe sci-fi based artwork and
things like that the slanted a's and v's really give this one some character and it's just a great
sans-serif font so if you're into angular straight lines then maybe dolce vita is for you next up we
have linux libertine which has rapidly become one of my all-time favorite serif font families
so we have five fonts that display the characters beautifully in elegance and importance and as
with most serif fonts you're going to want to use this on the correct design at the correct
time so maybe something to express a feeling of formality you know as opposed to being friendly
and informal it needs to express importance class and maybe something expensive we all
need a few good serif typefaces in our collection and this one is probably one you should download
so fourth on today's list is galdeglin and this is a novel sound series typeface with 14 fonts
and it is pretty unique this would be great for headings and titles because there are no lowercase
letter forms to be seen for the typeface itself is really well made and i think you're going to
find many great uses for this such as poster designs and publications with titles and so on
the same could be said about the next typeface kiona this is a standalone typeface pretty much
because we just have one normal font version and then an italic version to accompany it i really
like the k letter forms on this one and everything comes across as so crisp and so refined and modern
a lot of attention has been paid to the design of this typeface and that hasn't gone unnoticed
by me it's something else entirely compared to what is out there in the market that is
free for commercial use so if you have a design that is targeting young or modern demographics
this could be a great choice as it is cutting edge and really modern and the next typeface is a
step up from the previous version and it is ultra ultra modern as onyx is a great choice for sci-fi
based designs or anything that can be classed as modern the a's have no crossbars which adds
to that refined minimal look that modern design is so affiliated with these days so yeah all of
these fonts are free to download for commercial based use and they're actually all from dafont.com
so the first free resource today is a super quick and a very easy method at making mock-ups with
your designs and there isn't a huge selection just yet but that's probably going to change with time
so this resource is 100 free and you can use the download for commercial
or personal use you can search in the sidebar panel for a mock-up
so maybe a phone a tablet or in this case that i'm going to show you a laptop now you can see
the dimensions here and you simply just click the screen and locate your source image or your design
this is just a preview and it obviously doesn't look like realistic yet so you are going to need
to download the final output if you want to download one of the high res versions
you either need to donate or just say that you have donated before and spoiler alerts
i haven't actually donated but i probably will do because it's going to help this website grow
so as you can see this is a pretty neat mock-up and it was made in seconds
there are so many free font resources out there and i've covered most of them on this
channel before so things like font squirrel defunct and so on but i have today one that
i've recently discovered and it is pretty neat and that is fun space so we do have that crucial
commercial use button which means that every font we view is going to be okay for commercial use
so let's come down to the bottom and have a look at what kind of sans serif fonts we can grab
for free i actually really like this one here so i'm gonna grab it now
oh and this one too because i have been looking for a new bold and tall sans-serif
font and so yeah you can see that there is a nice selection of fonts for you to browse over
and at the top here you can adjust the preview display options
as well as a few other things too so do check out font space
there isn't a designer out there who wants to waste their time and yes as most of us can
probably design an icon you shouldn't really waste one two or three hours designing icons
for your projects and so this resource is going to help you save time there are many icons on
here and for many kinds of niches and subjects even logos of famous entities such as amazon
the cool thing about this resource is that you can multi-click your icons that you want to download
so maybe you're working on a project based around a very specific topic and then you can come into
the download button and just grab all of the icons you selected in one download package
so like every resource today this one is linked down below but do watch the rest
of today's video because there are two more remaining so if you are an astute
designer or a business person you will surely be sending emails to people on a regular basis
so this resource offers you many templates for your next email campaign and you do need
to sign up to access the downloads it is free of course but you do need to give up an email address
so if you want to take your business or your marketing seriously
using custom emails is one way to really boost your career and take things to the next level
have you ever wondered the exact color palettes of famous brands well this resource allows you
to search for a brand or a company and then find the exact colors they've used across their
entire branding campaign you can simply just click the colors and it's going to be added to
your clipboard or you can actually click the entire brand itself and then download it to
various different outcomes apart from this simply being interesting to see what colors
brands have used it could be a very helpful resource for your next branding or logo project
today's list is quite unknown to most people and that starts with mock-ups spelt like this
so we have 565 free mock-up downloads but the ones i found on here are very unique which is
why i'm showing you this website today there are categories to search here but as i always say a
good test of a mock-up website is their apparel section so as you can see these are high quality
in focus and free downloads so essentially we are all good with this website however this first one
was just a warm up the next resource is totally stacked out with free downloads
looking on the left hand side freebies bug has categories such as psd files illustrator freebies
mockups templates code stuff fonts inspiration and loads loads more the freebies relating to coding
is pretty interesting and it's something you don't typically find on a free resource website
so if you are a website or app developer this might just intrigue you we all love fonts i'm
pretty sure of that and here we can see a nice selection of free to download commercial use fonts
the cool thing is that they are all displayed using artwork that showcases the typeface
but yeah always make sure to check the license but as you can clearly
see here with this lovely sans-serif font it is free for commercial and also personal use
the next resource in today's video is called icon monster and this place has a huge range of icons
to grab and download for your next project totally for free we can browse categories
or just search for something specific but what you're going to realize is that these icons are
high quality and they can easily come in handy for various different graphic design projects
also when you go to download an icon you can get it in svg eps psd or even png
if we take a look at the legal mumbo jumbo which is actually quite important
we can see we're permitted to use them on non-commercial and also for commercial use
so yeah don't worry satori has got your back when it comes to commercial use of freebies
the last thing with this website is you can download a font that is made up of icons
instead of letters so for example a will be an icon and then b would be a completely different
icon and so on this is helpful because you won't need to download individual icons you can just
type out whatever you want on the go this next graphic design resource is a beast of a website
fdr or free design resources has fonts mock-ups graphics templates add-ons and so much more
the add-ons are particularly interesting because these are
extensions for adobe programs that allow you to do things the original coding would not
there are quite a lot of add-ons for photoshop but the illustrator range is kinda limited
again this website has a nice selection of fonts and they're displayed with artwork
and this is so much better than just seeing each type face in black lettering on a white background
it does show their character the typeface and also what kind of design it would possibly work on so
firstly we have unsplash which is in my opinion the best high quality place to get stock images
and stock photos the quality is really amazing considering all of the downloads are free to use
i use these pictures a lot for video creation but also things to do with my photoshop workflow and
like i said it is probably the highest quality place for images that you can get for free then
we're gonna move from unsplash to unblast which is the place that i personally go to
get mock-ups these days there's a huge range of ever expanding mock-ups on on blast as well as
other things like fonts and stuff like that and templates but i do specifically go to unblast
just for their mock-ups alone and i use mock-ups a lot for presenting logo designs to clients
but also i do use them sometimes in my video creations right here on youtube
and like i said there are some fonts on on blast but the majority of my fonts are not sourced from
a blast there are three different websites i find myself returning to each and every
time to grab myself three fonts and those are the font font squirrel and then also
google fonts obviously google fonts have all the fonts that you can use for commercial use online
but when it comes to dafont and also fontscroll i like to use the settings where i'm only going to
be filtering out those fonts that are completely free for commercial use i don't want to have any
legal or licensing issues later down the road so these are really good websites to get some awesome
and useful free fonts for commercial use now when it comes to vectors free pick is a really
awesome place to grab some outstanding and some useful vectors but also psds as well
again i filter everything out that's free so you don't have to sign up for a premium account
and with freepik you have a limited amount that you can download for free however you can always
sign in to google or different google accounts to extend how many times you can
download free content in one day but yeah free pick is really awesome for those who want some
decent quality vectors but now when it comes to recording my screen
for say illustrator tutorials i use something called quicktime which comes free with my mac
and that produces a really high quality and crisp screen recording experience now many people do
ask me what do i use to record my screen and that is it i use quicktime so if you're ever
thinking about making videos or anything of that nature quicktime probably is one of the best ways
to go and for me it was free on my mac another freebie that i use in my workflow is invoice home
this makes invoicing clients very very easy and fast and it is free up into a certain point
i think that is a thousand dollars per month or something like that but when you've actually
invoiced more than a thousand dollars you will need to sign up and it's only about five euros
per month anyway or you could just make different accounts and keep using different accounts to
ensure you have a free experience with these websites now what i personally edit my videos on
when i use something called davinci resolve which is again free you can do things such
as video editing motion graphics and also audio editing as well for something that's
free this is a hugely powerful program and i use it on every single video i make there are other
times i hire someone to design complex motion graphics and they often work in after effects
but yeah davinci resolve is completely free and speaking of footage or stock footage for that
matter i often find myself going to somewhere called mixkit which when they first came onto
the scene everything was free and their videos are very very high quality but these days they have
some of the videos for free and some of them are a premium account linked to envato elements
but the other place i use for stock footage is pixels video this is another great place to get
100 free royalty-free stock footage for your next project and i find i use it quite often
and if you guys want some really cool and free illustrations i suggest going to undrool they
have quite a wide expanse of illustrations there for you to grab completely for free
and you can just use a search bar to find what you're looking for so there was a very quick
rundown of the things that i use in my workflow that are completely free and as you can tell i've
covered pretty much every base of graphic design apart from things like adobe illustrator which i
personally prefer using over things that are free but you can check all of these websites
and resources linked down description box below so seeing as we're so close to the end of 2021
i'm not going to be back until the new year monday the 3rd of january is going to be the next upload
and that's where i'm going to explore ways that designers and marketing teams can hack their
brains of consumers now that video is going to prove to be helpful to you and your work and maybe
more importantly your portfolio and also many people have been asking about the new competition
due to the holidays and an illness december has been a month where i haven't been too
focused and too proactive but there will be a new cash prize design competition
in january so make sure to stay tuned for that and apart from that guys stay safe have a very
positive start to the new year and wish you all the best and i will see you in 2022.
of course if you want to watch more graphic design content just click the video on screen
you