{"id":11950,"date":"2019-10-04T13:52:13","date_gmt":"2019-10-04T11:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/?p=11950"},"modified":"2026-02-26T16:04:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T14:04:13","slug":"free-online-design-tools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/life-hacks\/free-online-design-tools\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Online Design Tools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You don\u2019t need to be a pro-designer with an agency-sized resource budget to create amazing images, banners and designs. You just need to know where to find the best free online resources.<\/p>\n<p>Take a look at our not-a-designer\u2019s guide to the best free online design resources to make your projects look amazing.<\/p>\n<h3>Free Stock Images<\/h3>\n<p>Because you can&#8217;t upload pictures of your cat for every project.<\/p>\n<p><strong>StockSnap<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/stocksnap.io\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">StockSnap<\/a> is the go-to platform for most people for free stock images. It references multiple free platforms and brings you beautiful, high-quality images which usually only require that you make mention of the photographer somewhere.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Burst by Shopify<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/burst.shopify.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Shopify<\/a> has put together a library of downloadable FREE stock images. You don\u2019t have to be a Shopify user to access them either.<\/p>\n<p><strong>New Old Stock<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Boston product designer, Cole Townsend, has put together a wonderful library of copyright-free vintage stock photos (<a href=\"https:\/\/nos.twnsnd.co\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">New Old Stock<\/a>) which you can use as you please.<\/p>\n<h3>Free Illustrations<\/h3>\n<p>We&#8217;re not all artistic, luckily many of those artists love to share.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Drawkit<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.drawkit.io\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Drawkit<\/a> is a collection of free customizable MIT licensed SVG illustrations which are available for you to use on your website, app, or project.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ouch Pics<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/icons8.com\/ouch\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ouch.pics<\/a> is a collection of clean, colourful free vector illustrations.<\/p>\n<h3>Free Icons<\/h3>\n<p>Need an Icon for that? There are other places to look &#8211; but only one where you will always find what you need.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Flaticon<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flaticon.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Flaticon<\/a> is a fantastic place to find free icons for just about anything you can imagine.<\/p>\n<h3>Graphic Design Tools<\/h3>\n<p>Make those images do what you need them to do.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gimp<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gimp.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Gimp<\/a> is a completely free image editor that will help you manipulate your images to your hearts desire.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Canva<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.canva.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Canva<\/a> is a fantastic tool that will let you upload your images (or use theirs) and turn them into all kinds of fabulous projects &#8211; from social media posts to your flyers or your online CV.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Remove<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Need to remove the background on an image? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.remove.bg\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Remove<\/a> is a tool is nothing short of magic. Upload your photo and it will automatically detect the focal point and remove everything else. Is it foolproof? No. But it&#8217;s pretty good, and a lot faster than deep-edging!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You don\u2019t need to be a pro-designer with an agency-sized resource budget to create amazing images, banners and designs. You just need to know where to find the best free online resources. Take a look at our not-a-designer\u2019s guide to the best free online design resources to make your projects look amazing. Free Stock Images [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":11951,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[498],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-hacks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/online_design_tools.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdAWxt-36K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11950"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14129,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11950\/revisions\/14129"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.webafrica.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}