This article has been contributed by Stacy Summers.
This post contains the best websites, offering free resources for web designers. Anything from free tutorials to free PSDs, vectors, textures, patterns, fonts etc. that can be used for whatever project you might have, whether it is a web app, desktop or mobile app, graphic or web design, you get the point. So here they are:
Free patterns, logos, fonts and maps:
Subtle Patterns
There are currently 382 high quality patterns available for free in this collection. New ones are added regularly.
The Pattern Library
While we are talking about patterns – this resource is my favourite. An amazing collection of tons of beautiful patterns designed by very talented people. A huge thank you to Tim Holman & Claudio Guglieri for this project.
Font Squirrel
As the title suggests – this website focuses on fonts. All the high quality fonts you’ll find here are absolutely free and can be used in web or print projects.
FreeVectorMaps
Who knows, you might need a quality map for some upcoming project. This site has tons and is updated regularly.
Free tutorials, guides and informative articles:
Tutsplus
Being a designer or developer you probably know this one. This site is one part of a family of awesome sites aimed at web developers and designers. Yes, the site is a part of Envato. It features a lot of very good articles on mobile and web development, WordPress, HTML, CSS etc. etc. etc. This is an irreplaceable resource of knowledge.
Max Cookie
If you were looking for good 3DS Max training resource this is it. They feature a lot of free tutorials on everything you can possibly do in 3ds Max – from rendering and animation to lighting and particles. There are also resources available – models, textures and reference material.
Premium Pixels
This is a good resource of free tutorials and design elements created by a UK designer Orman Clark.
Web Designer Depot
This informative blog for designers and developers is written by designers and developers, so you can believe they know what they are writing about. This is a great resource on hot topics in web design (usability, typography, responsive design etc.) Plus they have a very good freebies category with a ton of icon packs, PSD, UI kits, templates, texture packs etc.
Onextrapixel
Onextrapixel is a very good and informative online magazine for designers, I’m sure you read them. But it’s not a mere magazine, it is a valuable resource for tips and tricks in WordPress, Photoshop tutorials, design inspirations AND they have a very good freebies category, offering free icon sets, buttons, backgrounds, UI elements etc.
Designmodo
Designmodo also has tons of valuable information for designers and developers, they have a lot of valuable posts on WordPress and coding, there is a tutorials category with very good guides and there is a freebies section with a lot of UI packs and other good stuff.
Free PSDs, icons, UI kits and everything else:
365PSD
Started by Jonno Riekwel who decided to share a free PSD each day this resource is an amazing collection of free stuff.
Designmoo
Designmoo is a very nice community for sharing and discovering various free design resources. Everything from fonts to vectors, they have it all.
Designfreebies
Another good community that shares free design resources of high quality, you can contribute as well.
Instant Shift
This community has an extensive freebies collection that is regularly updated. Everything from free vectors to PSD actions and navigation templates is featured here.
PixelsDaily
This amazing web design website delivers high quality content, well, daily. All the resources that are featured are free for the first two weeks on the site, there is also a nice collection of precise and detailed tutorials. You can contribute as well.
Pixelentity
A team of designers from Italy and Ireland share design freebies and code snippets to download.
Freebies Booth
Pages and pages of resources, anything from web templates to such elements as sliders and icons, free for personal and commercial use.
Pixeden
A community full of free and premium design resources. I especially like their ask a resource community system where you can ask them to create a design you need.
Basiliq
Basiliq from Cloud Castle- over 300 design elements for prototyping, great hand-made set of icons for mockups.
You the Designer
This blog has a very well-organized collection of free Photoshop brushes and textures, icons, wallpapers, vectors and many more. The blog itself has a lot of good articles on design, so check it out as well.
Creative Overflow
Free high quality PSDs, fonts, icons, WordPress freebies and HTML templates, UI kits and many more are available here.
Flypixel
Nice and big collection of free PSDs, web templates, UI elements and everything else design related.
Media Militia
The site offers vectors, tutorials and even stock photography, all free to download, use and modify for personal or commercial projects.
Freebiesbug
Hand-picked free PSDs, fonts, code stuff and many other resources for web designers every day.
Agile Designers
This is a fantastic resource of all sorts of design/development related goodies. Everything here is user submitted and hand-picked, both free and premium stuff.
Psddd
This very well designed site makes it easy to search and find specific free goods from Dribbble.
Dribbble Freebies
This here is Dribble “freebies” tag with the latest freebies submitted by the Dribbble community.
GraphicBurger
Huge amount of stylishly designed free resources for every possible project.
Freepik
This is a very helpful search engine that locates high quality photographs, vectors, illustrations, PSDs, icons etc. The tool is aimed to locate free graphic content, if it can not find a free resource for a keyword you enter it suggests premium ones.
Do you have any other free web design resources to add?
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Stacy Summers is the the editor and an author for webdesign.org. She knows perfectly well how essential free resources are for web designers and has been collecting such resources for years.