Still worried about design materials for digital printing
As the saying goes, 'If a craftsman wants to do a good job, he must first sharpen his tools.' To achieve high-quality digital printing, hardware capabilities such as equipment and technology are essential, but digital printing files are also very important. However, during the design process, digital printing designers often face a dilemma: they can't find suitable original materials. I have compiled a list of commonly used material websites for everyone, and they are free! Can be used commercially! Come and take a look.
Images
01 Pexels
Website: https://www.pexels.com
Pexels is a free material website that offers a vast number of high-definition images and HD videos. You can download directly without registering, and all materials are copyright-free and can be used commercially without the need to indicate attribution.
The website also has various functional modules such as a search module, category module, and tags, making it easier for users to quickly and accurately find the materials they want on the site, with regular updates every week.
At the same time, Pexels also has plugins available for Photoshop, which can be used in Photoshop after installation. In addition, a major feature of Pexels is that it can provide detailed information for all images, such as resolution, dimensions, color palette, license, and so on.
02 mockups-design
Mockups-design is a 100% free-to-use-for-commercial-purposes material website. The types of materials cover a wide range of fields including beauty, food, bottles and boxes, office supplies, books and magazines, logos, and more. The images are high quality, the stock is abundant, and all are free-to-use-for-commercial-purposes materials.
网站还提供高分辨率的分层 PSD 下载文件,进入详情页后直接点击就可以下载了,无需注册登录,非常适合数字印刷设计使用.
03 Unsplash
Unsplash is a high-definition image library with a large number of free images that can be used commercially, and it is also the preferred image search website for many designers. On Unsplash, you can discover many particularly beautiful high-definition free images just by browsing. However, it is a bit unfortunate that the image resources on Unsplash are not updated very frequently, about once every 10 days.
The Unsplash website supports searches in both English and Chinese. However, most of the images on Unsplash are currently contributed by designers, photographers, artists, and others from abroad. Searching in English will yield more images and a wider range of options.
04 Pixabay
Pixabay is a website that integrates the sharing of photos, illustrations, vector graphics, video clips, and music. The images on the site cover a wide range of subjects, with over 2.6 million high-quality images and video materials, and can be downloaded for free, allowing you to easily handle various digital and print design scenarios.
The website was founded by Hans Braxmeier and Simon Steinberger in November 2010 in Ulm, Germany, and was acquired by the Australian design and publishing platform Canva in 2018.
05 ColorHub
ColorHub is also a website that collects many high-definition copyright-free images, and the official website clearly states that the current collection number is 100,000.
Although ColorHub has far fewer images than Unsplash, it has a distinctive feature: it extracts the colors contained in the current image and displays them as a color palette in the lower left corner. If you see a hue you like, you can click on the corresponding color swatch, and ColorHub will search based on that color, returning all images with the matching hue. This is very helpful when looking for images with a consistent color tone.
06 idea-mag
idea-mag is a graphic illustration website with a strong sense of art. The entire site has no unnecessary design, clean and neat, and the image quality is also very high. The simple letters and numbers are suitable for printing, as well as for embroidery. Illustrations are also very suitable for digital printing. The only drawback is that the website loads relatively slowly, so it is recommended to use Google Chrome.
Graphic Layout Magazine (Idea Mag) is an IDEA magazine founded by Japan's Seibundo Shinkosha, focusing on graphic design and layout. It is published quarterly in Tokyo, Japan, and offers both Japanese and English versions. Its main sections include magazines, books, events, and news, and it can also help designers in the digital printing industry find related layout inspiration.
Vector Graphics Category
01 unDraw
unDraw is an open-source and free vector material website. The site provides many simple and stylistically unified vector materials, which are very suitable for use in digital print file design.
unDraw allows you to directly adjust the main color of all illustrations from the website. Click the color picker at the top right of the website to open the color picker panel, modify the default color in the panel, and you can batch adjust the main color of all vector materials. It supports downloading in SVG and PNG formats, does not require attribution, and can be used for commercial purposes.
02 Manypixels
Manypixels is also a royalty-free vector material website, with colors mainly in gradients and more delicate pattern details. The website releases new illustration materials every week, supporting downloads in SVG and PNG formats. When downloading, you can choose the appropriate format as needed, and it can be used for free for personal and commercial purposes.
When filtering materials, Manypixels offers two filtering criteria: material category and type. The category is related to the usage scenario and industry of the materials, while the type reflects the style of the materials (monochrome, isometric 3D, duotone, flat, etc.). Using these two filtering criteria together in searches can yield more targeted materials. Like the unDraw website, Manypixels also supports adjusting the main color of all illustrations directly from the webpage.
03 Freepik
Freepik is a website with a vast amount of high-quality resources, and these resources are divided into free and paid categories. Free resources can be used for personal and commercial projects. When searching for resources, Freepik provides multiple filtering options, such as searching for a single resource or a resource pack, free or paid, and the format of the resource (vector, bitmap, PSD, icon), so that the search results can better meet the needs of digital print designers.
When using free resources from Freepik, it is necessary to indicate the source of the material. For different usage scenarios (web, print projects, videos, apps/games), the website provides corresponding instructions for citing the resources.
04 Delesign
Delesign is a website with a huge number of fully customizable free illustration materials. The illustration materials are available in SVG and PNG formats, can be freely used in digital printing projects, and have no copyright restrictions.
Delesign aggregates a large number of design materials including illustrations, icons, graphics, websites, branding, and more. The website design is simple, without a lot of advertisements, and you can directly change the colors of illustrations and icons online, as well as easily download SVG or PNG files with usually high quality. However, because the website has no login option, it does not support search, favorite, or edit functions.
05 Ouch!
Ouch is an illustration material website founded by Icon8. It has a wide variety of materials with clear categories, and the materials in each category can be directly downloaded as PNG files without registration.
Ouch! includes a series of free vector illustrations. It provides various categories of illustrations and vector elements to help users be more proficient in web design, and it can also be used in other fields. However, when using free illustrations, a link back to the website is required to indicate the author's copyright.
06 Vecteezy
Vecteezy is one of the largest and best vector graphic websites in the world, collecting a considerable amount of image materials, and updating daily. Here, you can also see some vector graphics shared by other designers, and digital printing designers can download free materials anytime and anywhere.
Vecteezy materials cover three major categories: vector graphics, bitmap photos, and videos. You can easily search among tens of millions of materials created by designers from around the world, and the vector graphics section can be downloaded for free and used commercially.
