Any graphic designer, no matter the skill level or area of expertise, can appreciate the wide array of design resources available online. Sometimes you’ll need to quickly generate certain aspects of your design, find cool ways to present your ideas to your client, or simply find inspiration. Hopefully, these design resources will inspire your next project and make an impact on your workflow, whether big or small.
Interactive Resources
Remove.bg
Sometimes, you don’t want to deal with the hassle of masking images. That, or you’re doing a quick personal project and don’t feel like waiting for Photoshop to load to do one job. If you have an image with a solid colored background, you can remove it with a click. While not perfect, it’s useful for quick jobs where precision isn’t necessary.
Check out Remove.bg
Coolors.co
Finding unique color palettes to use in projects can be difficult sometimes. Maybe you know you want to work with a pale lavender, but are lost on an accompanying color. On Coolors, you can quickly generate your own color palettes, or even explore palettes made by other users to find one that clicks. Just press spacebar, and you’re off!
When generating your palette, you can choose to lock certain colors, so that even when you continue to randomize, your chosen color will stay until you can find the perfect match.
Check out Coolors.co
Blobmaker.app
Who doesn’t love blobs? They’re everywhere in design nowadays and come in a huge variety of shapes, colors, and blobiness.
You can change the blob’s color, amount of “points,” its wobbliness, and so on. Build your own, or click that last button to randomize the blob based on the settings you chose. When you’re done, click on the download button to download an .svg of your blob.
Check out Blobmaker.app
Typographic Resources
Wordmark.it
If you’re a frequent user of fonts, they tend to pile up on your computer. There has to be some typeface you already own that you can use on your project. Luckily, wordmark.it makes it easier to sort through your typefaces. You can type in a phrase, and it’ll show you how it looks with every face on your system so that you can pick the perfect one. You can even adjust the kerning to be tighter or looser.
Check out Wordmark.it
Fonts in Use
Fonts in Use is an archive of typefaces in use in magazines, advertising, album covers, and so much more. If you need help pairing your typeface with something unique, this is the place to check! Or if you’ve seen a typeface in the wild that you want to identify, you can try searching it here, though sites like What The Font may be a better resource for that.
Check out Fonts in Use
Curated Inspiration
Information is Beautiful
This site is full of interactive infographics to draw inspiration from, or even just to explore and learn something new. They highlight a variety of graph types, and you can discover new ways to visualize your data. If a certain topic interests you, you can sort by graphs and charts only containing your selected topic. See how people make dense numbers and statistics interesting and digestable!
Check out Information is Beautiful
Awwwards
Stuck on site design? Explore Awwwards to see some of the best of the best in modern web design. Awwwards compiles sites from hundreds of industries all around the world, and you’re guaranteed to find something new and unique with every site you visit. The site features a site of the day, nominees to vote on, and collections organized by designers and other users if you’re looking for a certain vibe, or to compare your design to others in the client’s field.
