Hi, this is Anne with Graphic Design How To, and today I'm going to give you my list
of 11 design resources for graphic designers. Now a few of these are paid sites, but most of them
are free, but then some of the free ones do have restrictions on how you can use the file. So I'll
let you know which ones have restrictions as we go. I'm also going to put these in
categories. And you'll see on the video itself on the timeline, there should be
little categories, you can click on to see the ones you're interested in. All right,
let's get started. Photos to use in your projects: This first site is pexels.com. And on this site,
the photos and videos are free for personal and commercial use.
And there's no attribution necessary, meaning you don't have to credit the author. But they
do appreciate that, of course. Now these photos are great if you have a kind of generic blog, and
you want to put generic photos on your blog. But if you're looking for a specific image, it's not
so great. So let's search for 'landscape.' There are some really amazing landscape photography.
And these are sort of, you know, generic images. If you want to get more specific, like I used to
work for a health care agency. So a lot of times we would need very specific healthcare images. So,
something like 'Doctor with iPad.' And really, there's nothing here that I could use. I'd have
to go to Shutterstock, or another one of the paid stock websites to get that type of imagery.
She's not actually a doctor, for example. She's a pregnant woman going in for her sonogram. So
there's really nothing I could use in that case. This next site is also for photos: unsplash.com.
And it's just like pexels. You don't have to do an attribution.
You can use them for personal and commercial projects, so it's very similar. We can also type
'landscape' here to see what kind of images we get. Wow, a lot of really great ones. Well, let's
try 'doctor with an iPad' again here. We have some doctors on an iPad, and we have a doctor,
but no iPad. So if you need more specific images, you'll have to go with a paid site, most likely.
Vector images: For vector images, pixabay.com is really great, and it has a similar license as
pexels and unsplash, meaning you can use these for personal and commercial use, and you don't
have to do an attribution. And they have some really great ones on here. Icons and icon sets:
The Noun Project is a really great website for icons. Now there's a difference here. If you use
these icons, you do have to add an attribution for the creator, but let's type in 'healthcare.'
Okay, and there are a lot of really great health care icons out here...
a lot of different styles. And these are all very usable, in my opinion.
Let's try food icons. You'll notice that all the icons on this site are black. And, of course,
they're vectors, so they can be recolored however you like. Learning new graphic design skills:
If you want to learn a new program or learn about design theory or something like that,
and you want to watch full courses Skillshare is really great. Skillshare really focuses on
creative courses. Other sites like Udemy usually offer every type of course you can think of,
but Skillshare really focuses on creative ones. Now this site is really cool, because you don't
pay for individual classes. You just pay a monthly subscription, and you get access to
all the classes on the entire website. And by the way, if you want to try this out, I have a link
in a comment below the video where you can get two free weeks to test it out. And after that,
I think it's something like $10 a month. I've been a subscriber here myself for a few years.
And it's really nice to learn something new. Right now I've been really focusing on After Effects.
Another great resource that you've apparently already found is YouTube. Now with YouTube, you're
going to get mostly really small videos on how to do one specific thing. So if we go out here and
search for 'graphic design,' you can see how long these videos are. This one's about nine minutes,
six minutes. This one is 12 minutes. So they're really short. They're not full courses,
for the most part. But if you're wanting to learn, you know, how to make a wavy line around
a circle or something like that, YouTube is the best place for that in my opinion.
Mockups: PlaceIt.net has a lot of both free and premium mockups. Now the free ones can be used for
commercial projects, so that is really cool. You can also use their videos to showcase a product,
and there are free ones there, too. So if we come over here to mockups, and go to freebies, these
are all the ones that you can use commercially, that don't cost anything. And this site is also
really easy to use. So you just click on the one you want to use, then click 'insert image', and
you can upload from your device, and then it will allow you to kind of position it where you want.
And then you just go to 'free download.' Now I think you'll have to have an account to actually
download, but that's free too. Free Fonts: You may already know about Google fonts, but all
these fonts that are offered on Google fonts are free for personal and commercial use. You can also
Google 'Font Pairing' or 'Google Font Pairing', and those show you two fonts that work really
well together. Then you can just come back here to this site and type in the name of the font.
Then you can click on it and download the family install it on your machine, and it's totally free.
Also, Google Fonts is always expanding, they're always adding new ones. It's an awesome place
to find really high end, great fonts. Creating Fonts: Now, this site (Fontself), isn't free,
but in my opinion, is totally worth it. It'll probably run you about $50, but you can make
your own fonts inside Illustrator with this tool. I've sold a few of the fonts I made with Fontself.
I've made my money back many times over. I also have an affiliate link with Fontself,
and that's in the description below, and that will save you 10%. And I also get a little something,
I think $5 or something like that, for each referral that I make. If you want to see a
video about how Fontself works, you should be able to see that link on your screen.
Web Design Inspiration: Anytime I have to make a new website, I come out here to Theme Forest.
So let's say I'm making a health care website. I can just type that into the search, and then
there are a bunch of templates. And these are actually templates that you can buy and use, but
I usually just look at these for ideas. So I'll open a few of these. And then you can do this live
preview. So I use these sites as inspiration like, 'Oh, that's a neat way to do a slider,' or 'Oh,
I like this button.' If you have to have three columns, how you can make that work and look nice,
or have icon sections like this. So it just gives you ideas on how to lay out your web page,
like, 'Oh, maybe I could do something like this.' And of course, with any inspiration
that you take as a graphic designer, you should always be able to hold yours up and compare it
to someone else's, and no one would be able to tell that you took the inspiration from them.
Logo Inspiration: For logo inspiration, I like Logospire. You can just scroll through
lots of different ideas. It's just a gallery of logos. And it's kind of like Pinterest, it never
ends. Now the only thing about this one is you can't search on this page. So you have to just
scroll through and see if there's a style you like.
All right, if you liked this video, and you want to see more videos like this,
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time a new video comes out. All right, I'll see you in the next video. Thank you!!!