In this ever-changing world of design, having the right set of resources at your fingertips makes all the difference. Whether you just started out as a budding designer or a seasoned professional in this domain, getting access to a bunch of high-quality resources readily available for free turns is a game-changer for your professional endeavour. With that in mind, this blog helps both beginners and professionals pick their go-to design resources from the list of top 10 most relevant resources for the desired purpose.
Also, while curating the above list of design resources we made sure that all of them are available at no additional cost and cover the majority of features essential to begin one’s own portfolio.
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Classification of the Key Design Resources
Before we explore each design resource in much detail, let’s first classify the design resources based on the role they play in the creation of unique designs. Below is the list of the types of design resources along with the commonly used free design tools:
Stock Images Repository
Stock images are regarded as one of the fundamental resources for a designer to not only incorporate high-quality visuals but also save time and cost from the task of creating original images. Unsplash is one such free stock image repository that is powered by a community of fellow designers to download and use without any copyright infringement policies. With over 2 million high-resolution stock images, you may never fall short of images when building your portfolio.
Typographic Resource
Typography is another salient feature of an effective design, requiring great design acumen, which helps in conveying the tone and emotion of a message fabricated by the designer. Moreover, in the present-day context, it is also believed to add aesthetic appeal to designs besides conveying a brand identity among the users.
Google Font offers an extensive library of free, highly customizable web-friendly fonts to choose from, which comes with a diverse selection of typefaces allowing easy integration with development tools. Convey the right visual message with the Google font tool.
Mockup Tool
They serve as a unique asset used in the design process for offering a final representation of the final product before it is all set to be launched. In other words, the mockup tool is the infrastructure that supports the interactive features of user interactions, making it more intuitive and user-centric.
Figma supports built-in prototyping tools that allow one to create interactive prototypes. Being a cloud-based mockup tool, the tool allows for remote collaboration among the team. It offers a simulation of real-time overlays of screens replicating the exact website behaviour.
UI/UX Tool
Continuous optimization of digital interfaces is possible with the right set of UI/UX tools handy. With the right type of resource, one can strategize their marketing initiative by enhancing user interaction through techniques like A/B testing, analytics and feedback loops. Google Material Design offers a comprehensive set of pre-built features for crafting appealing digital interfaces which include color palettes, icon sets and design guidelines.
Logo maker
Logo designing is something that closely associates with your brand identity and so should be handled with precision. Although a dedicated logo designer should be ideal for the above purpose, in the event of haste or making some last-minute changes then using a free logo generator would serve the purpose.
Hatchful by Shopify comes with hundreds of unique logo templates designed for dedicated industries and professional institutions. Make use of this platform to add icons, customize colours, and create a unique brand identity.
Color palette generator
Colormind
Much like the typographic elements used in designs, colours also play a significant role in adding a transition to the mood of the audience of your content. Mixing the shades of colour in the right balance indeed requires a high degree of precision and this is where the colour palette generator comes into the scene.
Colormind is one of the simplest colour palette generators that heavily depend on deep learning technology to learn from diverse sources of inputs including paragraphs, movies, and other media forms.
Infographics maker
Infographics serve as a unique way of pictorially representing otherwise complex information into consumable visual snippets. This helps your audience to receive the entirety of the message without scrolling through the entire information.
Visme is another free resource for creating and sharing professional Infographics with related stakeholders without prior design experience. This tool is used by a vast spectrum of professionals including marketers, communicators and educators.
Inspiration resources
For beginners and professionals, fueling your imagination with a constant source of inspiration becomes quite a challenging task at times. However, with the right online resources, one can deduce ideas for creating breathtaking designs.
Behance is a platform that allows designers and artists to present their work portfolios in graphics or animation to spark curiosit y among aspiring designers. Become a part of this free community platform to begin a zealous career in design.
Free Image Editing Tool
Image or photo editing tool is a great resource for ensuring consistency across the styles, colours and branding elements throughout the design material. Let’s see one such free image editing tool to better understand its features.
Although quite famous for its premium features, the free version of Canva is also packaged with unique drag-and-drop features for creating and editing anything and everything. If you are a hobbyist or a professional marketer, this tool brings immense learning exposure with the proper usage of colour choices, logo templates, and banner designs among others.
Vector graphics editor
The vector graphics editor is a highly resourceful tool that helps in offering precision over the shapes and complex layers of designs for delivering professional-quality results. Their ability to scale without losing quality as opposed to pixel-pixel-based editors makes it a preferred choice when working on projects including logos, icons, illustrations and other design elements.
The free version of Gravit Designer supports cross-platform operability and allows real-time collaboration between teams with other features such as simultaneous feedback. It is available as both web and desktop-based applications.
Must Read: Launch Your Successful Graphic Design Career
Summing up!
Now, that we have reached the end of this blog here’s what one should consider as a key design resource. Although the list presents the most commonly used design tools for a beginner, as well as a professional the decision should lie on the end objective of such tools. For making a portfolio focusing on highly scalable graphics, one can prefer vector graphics editing software over the conventional pixel-based counterparts. Likewise, for fueling your marketing efforts then Visme is again a good choice to go ahead with.