Hey! It’s Joe. I’ve been working at geek for two years now, so I’d like to recap the most useful design websites & online tools I’ve found during my time here in the hope that it helps budding designers that may be reading. So, in no particular order, here we go:
1. Coolors – Creating Colour Palettes
When creating or looking for a new colour palette, Coolors is an excellent website with a tool allowing you to randomise a colour palette and then lock in colours that you like, almost like a slot machine (we don’t recommend gambling, nor gambling with your colour choices). You can then refine your picked colour palette multiple ways until you precisely have the colour palette you want. However, if you need help with what you are looking for, they also have a library of colour palettes.
2. WhoCanUse – Checking Legibility of Text Colours
When adding typography to a design, you must ensure that your colour choices make the text readable for people with visual impairments. With this tool, you can input the colour of the text and background and set the size of the text, and it’ll tell you how easy it is to read for each impairment. It’s so simple to use and gives you that piece of mind as a designer.
3. WeTransfer – Sending Large Files
When I send files over to someone, I’d usually use my email unless the files are over 15MB, then I would use WeTransfer, which is often used when working with high-quality images. It’s an intuitive website that allows you to send up to 2GB for free.
4. Behance – For Design Inspiration
When looking for design inspiration, my first call is always Behance. There’s such a wide variety of high-quality design work on any topic that your mind can muster. I recommend you use Behance if you still need that source of inspiration for your work.
5. WhatTheFont – Finding a Font From an Image
When I’m creating a design, most of the time, I will use look to use the same font in their logo or their previous artwork to keep brand consistency. If the client doesn’t know what these fonts are, you can chuck an image into this tool, and it’ll tell you which fonts are the closest match.
6. Freepik – For Graphics, Templates and Photos
Freepik is a useful design website when time is of the essence in creating a quick design; Freepik is my go-to for pre-made graphics. The files you can download are editable, so I can edit the design to fit the client’s brand identity. Creating designs using platforms like Freepik rather than creating illustrations from scratch means we can offer much more affordable prices for our clients.
7. Flaticons – For Icons
Owned by Freepik, Flaticons is a fantastic website for finding icons for your designs. With such an extensive library of icons that can be filtered in multiple ways, it’s easy to find the icon you’re looking for unless you are doing something relatively niche.
8. Mockup World – For Free Mockups
Mockup World is the best website I have found for free product mockups. They have gathered mockups from many other sites, so they are all in one place. Once you’ve found the mockup you’re looking for, it links you to the source of the mockup.
9. Muzli – Design Inspiration Browser Plug-in
Muzli is an ingenious browser plug-in I recommend to any design enthusiast. When you open a new tab, it shows you the latest designs and cool websites rather than giving you a blank screen. One problem with this, though, is that I often get distracted by all the awesome stuff that I lose my train of thought!
10. Pexels – For Stock Photos
In my opinion, the best website for free stock photos is Pexels. You can’t always find pictures that match your current criteria, but you know that all of the images on there are excellent quality, so that’s where I look first.