60 Best Design Resources of 2021
Published: 2021-05-06 08:15:42

Are you a design nerd? Or a developer learning a bit of designing in between? Well, for your learning, practice, and even to make projects you will need some tools and resources to kick off your side-hustle in design.

Here, we present your 60 best design-only resources you need to start being creative. You will find something unique, from new illustration websites to color-based tools you need to try. 

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### Best Animated GIFs

1. [GIPHY](https://giphy.com/): Probably one of the most popular websites to find, create, and serving over 1 billion GIFs a day!
2. [Tenor](https://tenor.com/): One of the biggest competitors of GIPHY with a less crowded interface. Simple but with a tonne of content.
3. [Reaction GIFs](http://reactiongifs.com/): A little different as it has “I am feeling” and “My answer is” search options to return reaction-based results.
4. [Imgflip](http://imgflip.com/): A perfect combination of GIFs that double up as memes! You can make both memes and GIFs to post on their platform.
5. [Reddit](http://reddit.com/r/gifs/): Need user-moderated, user's favorite GIFs? There are some subreddits that you will find nowhere else!
6. [Gfycat](http://gfycat.com/): They have multiple categories on varied search terms along with a separate developer portal for API and SDK access.
7. [gifgifgifgifgif](http://www.gifgifgifgifgif.com/): Not kidding! This is one of the funniest ones out there. And yes, they use strange UI with Comic Sans...
8. [GIFBin](http://gifbin.com/): Another one with a weird look. On their homepage, you'll get one random GIF along with the ability to comment.
9. [Imgur](http://imgur.com/): People are posting anything here from normal images to memes to photos to...of course GIFs!
10. [PandGif](https://pandagif.com/): +1 to panda for including stickers along with a vast variety of GIFs.

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### Best Illustration Resources


1. [Icons8](http://icons8.com): Not only they're one of the best icon creators but they have a separate section for vectors in their navigation. Check out the popular Ouch! set of illustrations.
2. [Shapefest](https://www.shapefest.com/): They came in recently with a bang. Come here for a massive set of 3D shapes, hands, circles, and more.
3. [ls.graphics](https://www.ls.graphics/illustrations): One of the most active platforms where you get both paid and free set of illustrations, mockups, and everything for your design needs.
4. [Shape 2](https://shape.so/): A little shy of 30,000, they have illustrations to use with SVGs, Lottie, and even for your React apps!
5. [Sapiens by UI8](http://sapiens.ui8.net/): Need humans to customize? UI8, the extensive marketplace for all things design has this neat tool.
6. [Limitless Designs](https://limitlessdesigns.io/avatar-illustrations): This is a free collection of avatars that you can use for both commercial or personal projects.
7. [Isometric Love](https://www.isometriclove.com/): All your search for "cute isometric illustration" ends right here. You can even customize them accordingly.
8. [Free Illustrations](https://freeillustrations.xyz/): They are all free but also have 130+ premium customizable options too.
9. [pixeltrue](https://www.pixeltrue.com/free-illustrations): Free SVG illustrations and Lottie animations under MIT License.
10. [Big Heads](https://bigheads.io/): Combine different expressions, clothes, hairstyles, and more to make a random head illustration all with your wild imagination!

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### Best Icon Resources


1. [Tabler Icons](https://tablericons.com/): 800+ free SVG icons for you to customize colors, stroke, and size.
2. [Icônes](https://icones.netlify.app/): The Holy Grail of almost all the popular icon sets available online. Comes with different options, searches, and is open-source.
3. [Iconscout](https://iconscout.com/): 3300+ free vector icons with 3 different styles and 27 categories to choose from.
4. [Eva Icons](https://akveo.github.io/eva-icons#/): They have icons for common actions and items. They can also be used as an NPM package.
5. [Ikonate](https://ikonate.com/): Ready-to-use fully customizable icons. You can even change the cap and corner of each icon separately.
6. [Icon store](https://iconstore.co/): Choose from the colored, glyph, or outlined icons available under a varied set of categories.
7. [Flaticon](https://www.flaticon.com/): With more than 3,545,000 icons at your disposal, it's one of the largest collections of icons available.
8. [The Noun Project](https://thenounproject.com/): It doubles as both an icon and a photo resource. They specialize in their categories like "Diversity in Tech", "Work from Home" etc.
9. [Font Awesome](https://fontawesome.com/icons?d=gallery): Still the king! It stands out because of the regular updates they have on their icon set, comes with 5 types of icon styles, and has robust support to use in your code.
10. [Iconfinder](https://www.iconfinder.com/): 4,949,683 SVG icons. Talk about numbers!

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### Best Color Palette Resources


1. [Vangogh](https://www.thevangogh.in/): This is a search engine for color pallets. Just search for any color by word or hex value, it will return different pallets along with a nice dotted graph for more detailed information on each color used.
2. [Colors and Fonts](https://www.colorsandfonts.com/color-palettes): As the name goes they also have fonts available. But their pallet comes with a search option, resources section, and click-to-copy hex colors.
3. [calcolor](https://calcolor.co/): This is your resource to get to know about any color. Just enter the hex value, get similar colors, add to your favorites, and more.
4. [Eva Design System - Deep Learning Generator](https://colors.eva.design/): Enter your brand color, and get semantic colors with the power of a deep learning algorithm.
5. [Eggradients](https://www.eggradients.com/): All of your gradients and color pallets presented to you in the form of 200+ egg shapes.
6. [Happy Hues](https://www.happyhues.co/): The best way to get theme colors for your website or app. They have curated pallets with live previews.
7. [Khroma](http://khroma.co/): It uses AI to learn which colors you like and creates limitless palettes for you to discover, search, and save.
8. [Coolors.co](https://coolors.co/): One of the most popular resources to get thousands of color schemes with support for Adobe, iOS, Chrome, and more.
9. [Color Hunt](https://colorhunt.co/): Also available as a Chrome extension this is a free and open platform for color inspiration.
10. [Muzli Colors](https://colors.muz.li/): Generate pallets with hex code, color name, or even by uploading an image. Then bookmark the pallet, copy the link, or even download the entire color scheme as SVG.

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### Best Graphics Resources


1. [Moose - Photo Creator](https://photos.icons8.com/creator): This is something different. Instead of searching for stock photos, here you create your own. Definitely for those who want to stand out in their image search.
2. [Pexels](https://www.pexels.com/): One of the best content for free stock images and videos with challenges for creators.
3. [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/images/stock): They are the ones who accept only the finest quality images with varied categories.
4. [Shutterstock](https://www.shutterstock.com/photos): Get royalty-free stock photos, pictures images, vectors, illustrations, editorial, footage, and music!
5. [Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/): They have over 1.8 million+ high-quality images and videos.
6. [Burst](https://burst.shopify.com/): Created by Shopify, use them for both non-commercial and commercial purposes without attribution. 
7. [Adobe Stock](https://stock.adobe.com/in/): Apart from the usual images, you also get 3D assets for your projects.
8. [Coverr](https://coverr.co/): Stock videos free to download for commercial and non-commercial use.
9. [Mixkit](https://mixkit.co/): Created by Evanto, this has high-quality, curated videos and animations.
10. [Motion Places](https://www.motionplaces.com/): This one has videos from different places around the world for you to choose location-based content.

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### Best Font Resources


1. [Fonts in the Wild](https://www.fontsinthewild.com/): They have both Adobe and Google fonts under one roof along with free ones to choose from.
2. [Fonts In Use](https://fontsinuse.com/): This is an archive of typographic design, indexed by typeface, format, and topic.
3. [Typewolf](https://www.typewolf.com/): Get font recommendations, see what's trending, and get guides and resources.
4. [Free Faces](https://freefaces.gallery/): Browse fonts by styles and get all the information you need for that typeface.
5. [Freebiesbug - Free Fonts](https://freebiesbug.com/free-fonts): Get handpicked free fonts for your web and graphics need.
6. [Font Pairings from Colors and Fonts](https://www.colorsandfonts.com/font-pairings): With real-time contrast checking with colors, this comes with one of the best pairings for fonts available.
7. [Font in Logo](https://www.fontinlogo.com/): Find all the fonts used by the world's biggest brands for inspiration.
8. [FontsArena](https://fontsarena.com/): Free fonts and suggested alternatives with multiple categories.
9. [FontSpark](https://fontspark.app/): Just type any word to test fonts, then tweak the filters and get the fonts you need.
10. [Typespiration](https://typespiration.com/design): Enter keywords, add colors for some real-world inspiration.

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So, how many of these you've bookmarked already? Make sure you create something cool and accessible to showcase your client. Happy Designing!