Top Free Resources Used by a PowerPoint Design Agency
Creating high-quality visual designs requires a pool of tools and resources for sourcing quality materials that you can use to achieve your creative goals.
As presentation designers, we know the thrill of finding the perfect visual assets for your project—for free! To share some of this joy, we have compiled a list of some of our favorite free design resources that will allow you to save money without compromising the quality of your design work. Whether you are designing for clients, working with an agency, or just like to design as a hobby, having this list of options to choose from will give you a chance to find something unique that suits your specific needs.
Photography
Burst
Burst lets you download free, high-resolution images from several different categories and collections. These beautiful stock images are perfect for websites and blogs. You can subscribe to receive free photos by email, as well as other Burst content you may be interested in.
Freephotos
Freephotos does exactly what the name suggests—provides you with free Creative Commons photos that you can use in your design. New photos are uploaded every day including a free featured photo for download. Note that while a large selection of these images are free, there are some that need to be paid for and the website will redirect you as necessary.
Icons8 Photo Creator
Later in this article you will see Icons8 appear as a resource for high-quality icons. But the platform is worth mentioning here for their photo creator. This feature acts as an alternative for combing the internet for stock photos. Instead, you can create your own using elements provided by Icons8. Once you’ve created your image, you can download it as a PNG in select sizes. Additional size options are also available for purchase.
Pexels
Pexels is a great site not only for high quality photographs, but videos as well! They also host photography challenges for cash prizes to help inspire creativity and give back to the creative community.
Pixabay
Pixabay is another website that goes beyond photography. They have free stock photos, illustrations, vector graphics, videos, and music, all available for download and editing as needed. A true one stop design shop!
Rawpixel
Rawpixel is another great photography site that goes beyond photography. They also provide a wealth of fillable templates that can be used as backgrounds or decorative elements.
Stocksnap
Stocksnap.io provides high quality, curated images that are free for editing and manipulating however you need to.
Unsplash
Unspalsh is a great place to start looking for high quality photographs that are available for anyone to use. Their site is easy to navigate with plenty of categories being updated daily, and easy-to-locate download links for each image.
Icons and Illustrations
DrawKit
DrawKit houses free, hand-drawn vector illustrations and icons. You can sign up to receive free weekly illustrations or browse through the image packages that are available for free download.
Flaticon
Flaticon is a database loaded with millions of icons that are free for designer use. Their graphics come in multiple file formats so they are versatile and easy to use. You can also download packages that provide you with a set of images that follow a consistent design style.
Humaaans
Humaans is a free illustration library that lets you mix and match illustrations of people. They have tailored their platform to focus on human illustrations that are customizable—you can change their positions, clothes, colors and styles to suit your needs. Humaaans’ library works with design platforms such as Sketch, Figma, InVision Studio, and Adobe XD, so that you can use your customized characters across projects. Don’t be fooled by their “Add to cart” button. Enter $0 into the price field and you will be able to download the library free of charge.
Icons8
As we pointed out above, Icons8 provides you with more than the name implies. Of course, they are known for their quality icons, but they also house illustrations, photos, and music. They have a wide variety of illustration styles for you to choose from and are always staying on top of the most current trends in design.
Noun Project
Noun Project is a great website to use for icons and photographs. They have an app that you can download directly to your desktop and the capability to work with some of the most popular design platforms so that you can simply drag and drop icons directly into the software you use to create your designs.
Streamline
Streamline provides you with access to thousands of icons and illustrations that are free for use once you’ve created an account. With options from simple black outlines, to full-color emojis, you will have plenty of styles to choose from.
Freeicons
Freeicons houses plenty of useful packages of visually cohesive icons that work well together to give your designs cohesion and a strong sense of brand identity.
ITG Digital
ITG is a fun and useful platform that houses thousands of vector illustrations while also having an illustration builder that lets you create your own images. The ability to customize icons on their platform ensures high-quality illustrations that you can be confident will fit your brand needs so that you don’t spend hours scouring the internet looking for something that is almost the perfect fit. Their illustration builder is easy and intuitive to use, saving you plenty of time, even if you do find yourself needing to create your own images.
Logos
Simple Icons
Simple Icons is a great resource if you are looking for SVG versions of logos. Their site is straightforward and intuitive. You can scroll through by color or in alphabetical order to find the logo you are looking for. Once you do, all you need to do to download is click on the image and it will save a high-quality SVG file to your computer.
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Shapes
Get Waves
Get Waves is a great online platform that allows you to do exactly as the title suggests. Using a simple control panel, it allows you to build custom wave shapes in the color, shape, and transparency of your choice. Once your wave looks exactly how you need it to, you can download it as an SVG.
Blob Maker
Blob Maker is another platform that lives up to its name. The platform is straightforward and intuitive to use and lets you create a blob in the color and shape of your choice. When you are satisfied with your creation, you can easily download it as an SVG.
Shape Divider
Shape Divider is a free online tool that lets you export SVGs of shape dividers that can be used in design and web development. Their helpful tool shows you what your shape will look like in practice by providing you with a website template to trial your design.
Backgrounds
SVG Backgrounds
SVG Backgrounds lets you craft full-screen backgrounds that are supported by all modern browsers. It gives you a live demonstration of what your background will look like and is especially helpful if you are creating a website.
Fonts
Google Fonts
If you weren’t already overwhelmed with the amount of things Google can do, you now have one more thing to thank them for. Google Fonts is an easy-to-access collection of thousands of font families. Browse through the home page to find something you like or search for specific fonts by name. You can navigate through categories so it is easy to find sans serif, serifs, scripts, and so much more. You can also adjust the example message and the language, so that Google Fonts can show you exactly what your message will look like once the appropriate font is applied. Google Fonts will not show up on your Google home page, but, as with just about anything these days, it’s only a Google search away.
Dafont
Dafont is a great website for browsing through a variety of unique fonts. From simple sans serif fonts to more specialized designs, you can find just about anything here. Dafont does a great job of categorizing fonts not only by traditional groups—serif or sans serif—but also by theme. With categories like Horror, Retro, Medieval, and Modern, you will be able to find a font that matches your branding, event, or personal design tastes.
Font Squirrel
Font Squirrel has a great variety of fonts to choose from. Their easy-to-use platform organizes fonts in a way that makes it easy to find exactly what you need. Search by license types, family size, and font classifications to find exactly what will fit your project.
Lost Type
Lost Type hosts a wide variety of fonts and displays them in a designed template so you have an idea of what they will look like in action. With several designers contributing to the page, there is an option for any taste. Choose from packages with different weights and treatments. They also have recommended uses for each font to help you decide if it is the right one for your project.
Takeaways
As a PowerPoint presentation designer you can spend hours looking for the perfect photos or illustrations, and still come up with images that don’t satisfy the need of your specific project. Having this list of excellent resources will save you the time it would take to scour the internet for something free and useful. To save yourself even more time, consider hiring professional presentation designers to ensure you get the highest quality designs that fit your brand needs. We will do all the work of image sourcing for you, as well as so much more! We hope this list of free, high-quality resources saves you time and energy so that you can get back to more exciting tasks than searching tirelessly for the right visuals.
