Every graphic designer needs a little help now and again, so here are some free assets to speed up your projects.
In an ideal world, we would carefully, lovingly handcraft every graphic design asset ourselves. But in the real world of tight deadlines and squeezed budgets, there are times when it’s useful to have some downloadable assets to hand, to speed things up.
It’s even nicer, of course, if they’re free. So in this post, we’ve rounded up 25 high-quality backgrounds, free fonts and icon kits that have come to our attention recently. All free to download, they’ll hopefully provide just the right amount of aid to help you deliver your design project on time and on budget.
We'll start with free backgrounds, then on the next page you'll find a selection of free fonts, followed by free icons. Use the drop-down menu above to navigate.
Free backgrounds
White space is the designer’s friend, but a plain white background isn’t always the best way to go. If you’re looking to add some colour and texture to your graphic designs, then check out these eight great texture and pattern sets, all free to download.
This great set of hand-crafted organic textures, which come as PSD vector elements, can be used for business card designs, greeting cards, on mockups or logos or as background textures.
10 high-resolution jute texture backgrounds for your projects
This free texture pack includes 10 high-resolution jute texture backgrounds. They’ve been created from real jute fabrics in multiple colours and patterns, and can be used for photography, graphic design, textile design and other design projects. They're free to download for personal use only.
Add a touch of distress and depth to your designs with these free textures
This pack of subtle grunge textures can add a touch of distress and depth to your designs. It contains 10 white, grainy, scratchy and speckled textures to be used for any design background, including logos, posters, cards, prints and more.
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These patterns comes as PNGs and Photoshop and Illustrator files
A set of high-resolution tiled patterns for your graphic design projects, these patterns come as PNGs, Photoshop pattern files and Illustrator vectors so you can change the colours according to your needs.
Tile these wood patterns into seamless backgrounds
A pack of 10 wood patterns for Photoshop, these can be tiled into seamless backgrounds that are great for posters, flyers, wallpapers and more. Download the Photoshop PAT file, along with the patterns in 800×800px JPG images, for free.
These paper pattern backgrounds serve a range of design needs
This set of six free paper pattern backgrounds features unique colours and patterns. These can serve a range of design needs, including textile designs, scrapbooks, pattern fills, surface textures, storyboards, wallpapers and more. Download them for free in PSD format.
This set of six high vector quality textures (4000x4000px) includes three wood textures and three metal textures created by Vlad Cristea. Each texture is made from a real photo to give a rough, realistic look. Use them to give an aged look to your logos, ads, posters, photos and other creative designs.
Apply some subtle noise and grit to your designs with these free seamless textures
Created by British designer Tony Thomas for Medialoot, these free seamless textures are great for instantly applying subtle noise and grit to your designs. They’re free to download and use for both personal and commercial projects with attribution back to Medialoot.
Next page: Free fonts for graphic designers
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Tom May is an award-winning journalist and editor specialising in design, photography and technology. Author of the Amazon #1 bestseller Great TED Talks: Creativity, published by Pavilion Books, Tom was previously editor of Professional Photography magazine, associate editor at Creative Bloq, and deputy editor at net magazine. Today, he is a regular contributor to Creative Bloq and its sister sites Digital Camera World, T3.com and Tech Radar. He also writes for Creative Boom and works on content marketing projects.
