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 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:
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:
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:
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:
Awesome list, you can never have too many free resources available for commercial use. Thank so much for including Arbenting 🙂
that’s a great selection of blogs! all besides one are already in my feedreader. and many thanks for including my texture blog. much appreciated!
Awesome resource and thanks for the mention 😀
kewl thanks!
I’ve personally worked with almost everyone on this list at some sort of level and must say, it’s a really great crowd to be part of.
Here’s to freebies!
This is truly a great industry to be involved in, for this community aspect alone. I (unfortunately!) have a day job in another service-related industry and I can tell you that no-one shares resources, skills or advice as much as I have seen this industry do.
It’s actually extremely refreshing to be involved in something like this, I think it brings motivation and longevity to the industry.
Thanks everyone!!
wow….. great list
thanks
Great list, I’m glad to say some of my textures are featured on lost & taken 😀
Great list steven, i dont understand sometimes why people dont release some of their resources under a creative commons and allow people to use them for commercial use.
Instead they insist they link to there article and give credit and link backs (not ideal) and some great resources go to waste …
Hi everyone, thanks for the responses. And thanks to many of you for being the people who give out so many high quality freebies.
This is such a great list and I feel honoured to be featured. Thanks Steven. I also totally agree with Max. Either go the whole nine yards and allow commercial use or sell your resources.
Nice list. Cool freebie goodies. Attractive, useful and applicable.
Please feel free to use photos from my photo blog if you like.
Thanks,
This is an amazing compilation of resources, thank you! I now face the ethical dilemma of whether i horde it for myself or share with others. 🙂
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Great list! I feel very honored to be mentioned alongside such awesome sites! 🙂 Thanks!
It’s vey nice and helpful to find such selection of resources collected in one place. It’s a great work. Thanks very much.
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Hey Steven – thanks for mentioning the Six Revisions freebie section, and to everyone here, please feel free to use the freebies in there: they’re all original and licensed liberally so that you can use them for any purpose.
great selection and helpful too! thanks for this one!
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great collection!
Great selection! Thanks for passing it on!
Awesome blogs!
Thanks for sharing your collection of blogs! I’ll be sure to check them out!
The Caribbean Sky photos are beautiful!
Awesome blogs!
Great collection of blogs. I will keep these sites bookmarked so that I won’t have to spend so much time looking for the right resources in the future. Thank you.
I LOVE these!! They are just adorable. I am going to post a link to these on my blog if that is ok with you. I know that my followers will love these. Thanks so much!!