Design Resources can be expensive, especially if a client does not have imagery, icons, and/or patterns to support their brand. Below is a list of free resource websites that we have found to be very useful in the design process! From what I know, these resources are absolutely 100% free, however there may always be an exception to the rule so just make sure you check the on licensing information.

ICONS Font awesome is great, I would suggest downloading the actual font and installing it. After that you can use the font awesome cheatsheet and use the font as actual icons! iconmonstr is also good, but they seem to lack much of a library compared to font awesome.

PATTERNS

My favorite for patterns would have to be the pattern library. They have a lot of very nice patterns for free that have been designed by some of the most prestigious designers around the world! One Hundred patterns is also good as it provides very abstract patterns that can maybe spark an idea. Cgtextures has been around for quite some time but has always delivered in supplying various textures when in a time crunch. Subtle patterns focuses on.. you guessed it, subtle patterns so it is good to combine some of these with color.



STOCK IMAGERY



For free imagery I mostly stick to imcreator or freeimages as they are much easier to search for specific photos that one might need. Unsplash is a nice site and has a great library, but doesnt have a nice way to search for these types of photos. Stocksnap is a new one that I came across and it seems to deliver in desperate measures, still seems like it can use more of a library though.

If you are spending money on stockphotos we recommend Dollar Photo Club, they have a very nice collection and each photo/image is just $1 DOLLAR which is very inexpensive compared to istock or shutterstock! Really the library they have is great and their search filters make it even easier to find what you are looking for.

If you have any other additions to this list, write it down in the comments below and I’ll take a look!