The world of current web design can feel quite daunting when you’re starting out, but there’s plenty of fantastic free resources to help you get off your feet. We’ve curated a list of some of our faves that won’t cost you a penny!
We live in exciting times with a slew of fantastic UI tools to get your next web project started. Figma is arguably at the forefront – and the best part is, it has a generous free tier!
Figma allows you to create wireframes or high fidelity mockups for the web, and easily prototype your work to give your clients a better idea of how it all comes together. If you’re familiar with Adobe Illustrator or Sketch, you should feel right at home! It’s also a great tool for resizing and exporting assets, and boasts a powerful vector editing tool that’s perfect for precise icon work.
It also makes developer handover a breeze, allowing viewers to inspect objects and grab handy CSS values, and even export objects themselves!
Figma’s free tier allows you up to two projects, but unlimited files. If you’re a freelancer or using Figma for a personal project, this will do you nicely.
Illustrations so good, it hurts! Ouch is a collection of free-to-use vector illustrations from talented Dribbble artists, available in a myriad of different styles and subjects.
If there’s an illustration that’s close, but no cigar… you can put one on yourself! Ouch offers an inbuilt vector creator, allowing you to select from and edit hundreds of separate illustration assets to make a composition that’s truly yours.
Free-to-use stock websites have been a growing presence in recent years, with Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay being of particular note.
Burst, brought to you by Shopify, is one of the new kids on the block. Their aim is to arm designers, developers, bloggers and entrepreneurs with access to high quality photography without the need to splash out on expensive stock photography credits.
Their library is curated in handy, informative collections to help steer you towards the compositions you have in mind. All photos are free to use and edit as you please!
Are you starting a new project and not really sure where to begin with your colourways? Adobe Capture is an interesting app that allows you to generate colour palettes, patterns, and even textures for 3d models based on image files or your phone’s camera. Particularly handy if all you’ve got to start with is your client’s business card, or a few shots of their products!
The app itself is free to use – but if you happen to have a Creative Cloud license, you can synchronise and export your captures to Adobe’s famous suite of design apps with ease.
When you’ve worked on a few different projects, you’ll likely have amassed an impressive collection of font files – and your PC or Mac will probably start to feel the strain of having them all installed!
Fontbase comes to your rescue by allowing you to activate fonts only when you need them, freeing up some much needed processing power. It also provides a lovely user interface for curating your collections, and gives you access to Google’s impressive font library out of the box.