12 Blogs with Freebies for Commercial Design Use
By Steven Snell | Published May 19th, 2009 in ResourcesOne 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 frustration 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.
Bittbox
Bittbox is one of the best resources for freebies. Textures, brushes, and vectors are regularly distributed from Bittbox. There is also a page specifically for the terms of use, so be sure to check out the details.
Example freebies from Bittbox:
Patternhead
Patternhead releases a number of free patterns that can be used with Illustrator and Photoshop. There are also other freebies, such as textures.
Example freebies from Patternhead:
Six Revisions
Six Revisions has been providing some high quality freebies from Jacob Gube and from other contributors. Available freebies include a number of texture packs, a few WordPress themes, and Photoshop brushes.
Example freebies from Six Revisions:
Smashing Magazine
Smashing Magazine consistently releases high quality freebies from various designers. The freebies from Smashing include icon sets, WordPress themes, Photoshop brushes and vectors.
Example freebies from Smashing Magazine:
Design Shard
Design Shard provides several packs of high quality textures, and the grunge texture pack shown below includes over 300 textures.
Example freebies from Design Shard:
Lost and Taken
Caleb Kimbrough’s blog Lost and Taken is focused on giving away free textures. New texture packs are regularly posted.
Example freebies from Lost and Taken:
Colorburned
Colorburned provides a number of freebies, including some amazing brushes for Illustrator. Other freebies include Photoshop brushes, vectors, textures and more.
Example freebies from Colorburned:
Multi-Colored Illustrator Paint Brushes
Retro Tech-Shaped Illustrator Brushes
Fudgegraphics
Fudgegraphics provides a number of freebies that could be of use in your commercial work, particularly textures and brushes.
Example freebies from Fudgegraphics:
Blog.SpoonGraphics
Chris Spooner has some excellent, high quality freebies available on his blog, including vectors, brushes and icons.
Example freebies from Blog.SpoonGraphics:
High Resolution Textures
High Resolution Textures is obviously dedicated to providing just that, high resolution textures. Browsing through the archives you will find many useful sets of textures.
Example freebies from High Resolution Textures:
Think Design
Think Design offers free textures, vectors and brushes.
Example freebies from Think Design:
Arbenting
Arbenting has a large number of available freebies, including textures, brushes and more.
Example freebies from Arbenting:
