Free & Paid Images, Graphics and Fonts

You’re here because designing your site and you need images, graphics and a logo, so you’ll also need some nice font. You’ve got a few options… you can take or create the images yourself, you can find several paid image stock sites with a simple Google search, or you can find free images that you can use by using free stock photography, free stock vector and free font sites. I’m going to show you a few of my favorite free resources here.

Images are going to make your website beautiful. If you don’t choose the right types of images, your website won’t look so great. That’s why using your own images may not be the way to go unless you’ve hired a professional photographer to get your shots.

Before we dive in, I think we should quickly go over attributions. A lot of these sites may require you to attribute the author when using the free resources. To do that, you can simply create a new page on your website called something like “Attributes”. Here, you can make a simple list of author attributions using the code provided when downloading the free images. Then, at the bottom of your website in the footer, you can list this page as a resource, maybe together in the same menu with your terms of service or privacy policy.

There are also several images or graphics that don’t require attributions or payment to be used on your site commercially. These are simply free to use, so have at it.

Images

Let’s get started with images. In order to make your website shine, you need to find some quality images.

A quick and common method you can try is to search for free images using Google Images.  Once at Google.com/images, search for an image,  then, on the search results  page, look  under the search bar for the “tools” button and click it. Next, you’ll see a new menu. Click on the “Usage Rights” link and choose “Labeled for free use”. These are all images you can use for free and commercially on your website. Of course, the quality isn’t the greatest.

For better quality photos, check out 6 of my favorite free resources for images:

1. Pexels
2. Pixabay
3. Stocksnap.io
4. Unsplash
5. PicJumbo
6. Reshot

Here are 6 of my favorite resources for paid images. Some of these have free trials (wink wink).

1. Pond5
2. BigStock (Free Trial)
3. Adobe Stock (Free Trial)
4. Shutterstock (Free Trial)
5. Dreamstime (Free Trial)
6. PhotoDune

Vector Graphics

Next, let’s find some free vector resources. These are great for creating logos, icons or other graphic content for your website. In order to customize your vectors, you’ll want to use vector editing software like Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw or if you don’t think you’ll use an editor enough to pay for or install one, try Vectr, a free online vector editor.

Here are 6 of my favorite free sources for vectors. 

1. FreePik
2. VectorStock
3. Vecteezy
4. Flaticon
5. Vector4Free
6. unDraw (No attribution required)

Fonts

Finally, let’s find some nice fonts. You’ll want to use a special font in your logo to help give your site a signature identity. You may want to use these fonts as headers for your website as well. However, if the font you’re using is too crazy, stick to something simple for headers to help make your site feel fresh and modern.

Here are some good resources for free fonts:

1. Google Fonts
2. Font Squirrel
3. 1001 Free Fonts
4. dafont

And here is my favorite paid resource. I’m only listing one here because it’s the only paid font resource I ever use.

1. MyFonts

This should be more than enough resources to keep you moving forward. 

When I come across better sites for free images and graphics, I’ll update these lists. 

So go! Get those images up on your site and let’s keep moving forward! If you know any better sites than what I have listed here, please, let me know! Happy image hunting!