25 Sketch Freebies for Web & Graphic Designers
Anyone who’s been keeping up with design news should know about Sketch. It’s a tightly-focused piece of software with an emphasis on UI design. The program is developed for OS X by Bohemian Coding with a palette of tools that mirror Photoshop and Illustrator. Although the program is meant for interfaces you can build anything including icons and simple graphics.
This gallery includes 25 freebies released for Sketch. Although not everyone is using Sketch, many designers are jumping onto the bandwagon because it’s cheaper and easier than Adobe products. These freebies provide a deeper look at the design process and offer some great tools for newbies just getting into the software.
AirDrop Icon
Using PSD Freebies to Create Fast & Efficient Website Mockups
Building website mockups in Photoshop is a lot like using Q-tips to clean your ears. Not exactly the original purpose but it works great! However unlike the household cotton swab, Photoshop is a large graphics editing program that takes hours of practice to learn even rudimentary tasks. For web designers this process can feel like a hopeless pipe dream.
But one of the quickest ways to start learning Photoshop is by creating your own simple mockups with existing PSD elements. You’ll find yourself editing shapes and colors to fit into a layout while organizing the composition from your imagination. In this post I’d like to share ideas for using free PSD files in Photoshop to get familiar with creating website mockups.
A Freelance Web Designer’s Guide to Offering Freebies to Generate Leads
Many experts and gurus recommend giving away a product or service to attract leads. Offering freebies is a marketing strategy that has really taken off to the point where most of us are now inundated with free offers. In fact, not a day goes by when I don’t find a free offer in my email inbox or through a popup window on a site I’m visiting.
I used to get really excited about free offers, but now that it seems like everyone is giving something away it’s gotten so that I mostly just ignore over 90% of the free offers that I run across. Free doesn’t mean as much as it used to.
Many web designers have jumped on board the giveaway bandwagon. This is especially true for those designers who have a side gig that involves selling WordPress themes or apps.
In this post, I’ll examine the strategy of using free offers to attract business. We’ll look at what works, what doesn’t work, and I’ll explain how you can make sure that your free offer reaches your target audience.
20+ Design Blogs that Release Quality Freebies
Web and graphic designers have the privilege of being able to download quality, free resources that can be used in their work. Commonly-found resources include textures, Photoshop brushes, vectors, icons, patterns, and more. In today’s post I’d like to feature 20 design blogs that give back to the community by frequently releasing freebies to their readers. If you’re always on the lookout for quality resources, consider subscribing to these blogs. You may also be interested in our own Freebies category.
Lost and Taken
Caleb Kimbrough releases high quality texture packs through his blog Lost and Taken.
12 Blogs with Freebies for Commercial Design Use
One of the great things about the design community is the amount of free resources that are available for download. Whether you’re looking for textures, Photoshop brushes, vectors, icons or WordPress themes, there are tons of freebies created and distributed by other designers. However, if you’ve ever spent time looking for something specific to use on a commercial project, such as work for a client, you may have experienced the frustation of finding the perfect resource, only to see that it is restricted to personal use only.
Fortunately, there are plenty of designers who are willing to share their resources that can be used for both personal and commercial purposes. In this post I’d like to recognize those who have provided such great resources. If you do design work for clients, these are all great sites to bookmark so that you won’t have to spend so much time looking for the right resources in the future.
Each site that is listed here is offering a number of useful freebies, and some examples are shown and linked for each. In recent weeks we’ve started releasing our own freebies here on DesignM.ag, and it is with appreciation for the sites and designers mentioned here that all of our freebies will also be available for personal or commercial use.
Even though these sites allow commercial use, be sure that you read and understand any terms listed by the authors.
Freebie: Stone and Concrete Textures
Today we have a set of free high res stone and concrete textures from Caleb Kimbrough. The set includes 10 high-quality textures that can be used for personal or commercial purposes. You can download any of the images from Flickr (click on the image that you want and you’ll be led to the Flick page). […]
450+ Adobe Illustrator Patterns
The Adobe Creative Suite has to be one of the more popular design packages. Illustrator is specifically a great tool for any project including website layouts, vector art, illustrations, logos, and so much more. One resource many designers utilize are patterns for backgrounds. Repeating patterns are often more popular in websites to fill the whole […]
WordPress Themes With Great Use of Photography
WordPress is a world of creativity, and the best of it comes forward with photography and related themes. Whether you’re a photography beginner just starting out, a professional with a huge stack of pictures already to your name, an enthusiast, or just an avid photo-blogger; you’ll find the best ways to showcase your work online […]