Over the years of working with students on art, media, and design projects, I’ve curated a list of resources in response to the questions I get asked most frequently. This page collects links to tools and content licensing platforms to aid in your creativity.
Anti-Subscription Catalogue
This webpage catalogs non-subscription, free, open-source, and one-time fee softwares. There are a lot of alternatives to professional subscription-based design softwares if you know where to look.
Music / Sound Effects
I try to make my own content for my projects. But there are occasions where this isn’t possible, and I turn to something someone else created for help. I’ll focus a lot on Creative Commons licensing, because it’s a prevalent, easy to understand system for designers of all levels.
This is my go-to site for sound effects and music. You have to make a free account, but you get access to lots of great creators. Be sure to locate the Creative Commons license for the sounds you’re interested in and to follow the terms of the license.
Using Creative Commons’ openverse search directly is a great way to find music and sound effects quickly. CC licenses are displayed alongside the results, so you can be sure to find something you’re able to use for your project.
This site also has a paid version called “Tribe of Noise PRO.” Stick to the free music archive search bar at this link and you should find music with Creative Common licenses available.
There are YouTube and Creative Commons licenses available here. You’ll be asked to sign in to your Google account to access it. I recommend filtering results by "Attribution required" and then clicking the "License type" icon next to the track you're interested in to read the full conditions of the license. It’s also good practice to check YouTube's licensing details before downloading.
Images / Videos
I try to make my own content for my projects. But there are occasions where this isn’t possible, and I turn to something someone else created for help. If I find a website with images I’m interested in, I immediately locate their licensing page to learn more about the ways I’m allowed to use them.
Using Creative Commons’ openverse search directly is a great way to find images and videos quickly. CC licenses are displayed alongside the results, so you can be sure to find something you’re able to use for your project.
This is one of my favorite image sites because it also has vectors available (in addition to images, videos, gifs, music, and sound effects). My preferred design software is Adobe Illustrator, so having vectors available is a big help to me.
You can filter Google image searches by usage rights by clicking on “tools” at the top of the page. This link takes you through step by step. This is a helpful jumping off point, but it’s still important that you verify the license before downloading the image.
This is one of the more common image sites available today. This means its a great resource to find photos of all kinds, but it also means that the content of your design may not be unique to you unless you modify it in some way.
Color / Fonts / Design
Downloading unique fonts is a quick way to give a design a personalized feel. And installing new fonts is easier than it may sound: simply double click a .ttf or .otf file and click install. It’s important though to read any readme.txt files that come downloaded with your font to check the licensing details.
This is my go-to font website. I like the search categories at the top of the page. It’s easy to see the license preview next to each font. I always check the readme.txt file upon download for full licensing details.
This is my favorite color palette generator. Using the space bar to generate new schemes is fun, and locking colors to refine is super easy. One downside is that with a free account, you can only save a handful of palettes, but you can always write down your hex codes and save them in your notes app to get more mileage.
This is a backup for me when I can’t find what I need. It’s a clean professional website that promises fonts you can use even for commercial projects.
I enjoy the various color scheme options in Adobe Color whether you’re looking for complementary scheme or an analogous one, you’ll find it here. Sophisticated tools let you refine your colors and give you the HEX or RGB codes. There’s also accessibility tools available to improve the contrast of your design.