25 graphic design freebies to make your life easier

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In an ideal world, we would carefully, lovingly handcraft every graphic design asset ourselves. But in the real world of tight deadlines and squeezed budgets, there are times when it’s useful to have some downloadable assets to hand, to speed things up.

It’s even nicer, of course, if they’re free. So in this post, we’ve rounded up 25 high-quality background, fonts and icon kits that have come to our attention recently. All free to download, they’ll hopefully provide just the right amount of aid to help you deliver your design project on time and on budget.

We'll start with free backgrounds, then on the next page you'll find a selection of free fonts, followed by free icons. Use the drop-down menu above to navigate.

Free backgrounds

White space is the designer’s friend, but a plain white background isn’t always the best way to go. If you’re looking to add some colour and texture to your graphic designs, then check out these eight great texture and pattern sets, all free to download.

01. Organic Vector Textures

Download these PSD vector elements for free

This great set of hand-crafted organic textures, which come as PSD vector elements, can be used for business card designs, greeting cards, on mockups or logos or as background textures.

02. Jute Fabrics

10 high-resolution jute texture backgrounds for your projects

This free texture pack includes 10 high-resolution jute texture backgrounds. They’ve been created from real jute fabrics in multiple colours and patterns, and can be used for photography, graphic design, textile design and other design projects. They're free to download for personal use only.

03. White Subtle Grunge Textures

Add a touch of distress and depth to your designs with these free textures

This pack of subtle grunge textures can add a touch of distress and depth to your designs. It contains 10 white, grainy, scratchy and speckled textures to be used for any design background, including logos, posters, cards, prints and more.

04. Material Design Tileable Patterns

These patterns comes as PNGs and Photoshop and Illustrator files

A set of high-resolution tiled patterns for your graphic design projects, these patterns come as PNGs, Photoshop pattern files and Illustrator vectors so you can change the colours according to your needs.

05. Seamless Wood Patterns

Tile these wood patterns into seamless backgrounds

A pack of 10 wood patterns for Photoshop, these can be tiled into seamless backgrounds that are great for posters, flyers, wallpapers and more. Download the Photoshop PAT file, along with the patterns in 800×800px JPG images, for free.

06. Paper Pattern Backgrounds

These paper pattern backgrounds serve a range of design needs

This set of six free paper pattern backgrounds features unique colours and patterns. These can serve a range of design needs, including textile designs, scrapbooks, pattern fills, surface textures, storyboards, wallpapers and more. Download them for free in PSD format.

07. Wood and Metal Textures

Each of these textures is made from a real photo

This set of six high vector quality textures (4000x4000px) includes three wood textures and three metal textures created by Vlad Cristea. Each texture is made from a real photo to give a rough, realistic look. Use them to give an aged look to your logos, ads, posters, photos and other creative designs.

08. Noise and Grit Seamless Textures 

Apply some subtle noise and grit to your designs with these free seamless textures

Created by British designer Tony Thomas for Medialoot, these free seamless textures are great for instantly applying subtle noise and grit to your designs. They’re free to download and use for both personal and commercial projects with attribution back to Medialoot.

Next page: Free fonts for graphic designers

We all love free fonts but there are so many around on the web these days, it’s hard to keep up. Here are 10 cool new fonts that have come to our attention in recent months, all of which are free to download for your design projects at the time of writing.

09. Olivia Script Font

A unique and stylish calligraphy typeface

Complement your design work with this unique and stylish calligraphy typeface. Including 351 glyphs, you can use this font for wedding Invitations, greeting cards, posters, wall hangings, gifts and more. It’s free to download if you log in to the Font Bundles site via Facebook and give them a ‘Like’.

10. Miller Salt Font Duo

Miller and Salt Script scripts can be used together or separately

Designed by Mellow Design Lab, Miller Salt is a set of two hand-written, dry brush scripts that can be used together or separately. They're ideal for branding, wedding invitations, logos, book covers, stationery, marketing, magazines and more.

11. Brownhill Script Font

A handwritten font set to download for free

This hand-written font set created by Faisal Tanjung contains a full set of lower and uppercase letters, a large range of punctuation, numerals, and multilingual support. To access the alternate glyphs, you need a program that supports OpenType features such as Adobe Illustrator CS, Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Indesign or CorelDRAW.

12. Podriq

Check out this fantastic free typeface

Graphic designer Matt Cole Wilson has created this modern typeface featuring A-Z in caps and lowercase, 0-9, punctuation and common glyphs, and three weights. It’s available as a free download via Google Drive.

13. Quantify V2

A free display typeface for personal use only

Indonesian designer Saidi Alfianor is the creator of this display sans serif typeface. It’s free to download for personal use only.

14. Peenu

A hand-knitted typeface for use in your design projects

The creation of designer Nitish Kumar of India's Webkul HQ, Peenu is a 'hand-knitted' typeface inspired by Sharp Paper Cuts. It’s free to use in your design projects without the need for formal attribution.

15. Umhlanga Sans

This font is free to download in exchange for your email address

Based on Interstate Regular Compressed, designed by Tobias Frere-Jones, Umhlanga Sans is Graham Paterson’s first foray into type design and is free for personal use. At present the typeface contains the regular font weight, all uppercase and lowercase characters and numerals. It’s free to download in exchange for your email address.

16. Akrobat

This free font is perfect for headlines, logos and typographic compositions

Designed by Plamen Motev, Akrobat is a modern sans serif font with condensed proportions. The typeface comes in eight weights with a geometric aesthetic. Its narrow proportions make it perfect for headlines, logos, typographic compositions and short paragraphs of text, and it contains more than 500 glyphs with a wide range of languages. It’s free for both personal and commercial use.

17. Monti Sans Serif

This minimal font is ideal for logos and branding

Monti is a new sans-serif, minimal font that’s useful for creating minimal logos, branding, street signs, posters and more. Currently limited to lowercase letters (although there are plans to upgrade with uppercase alphabets soon), it’s free to download for both personal and commercial use as long as you register for free membership of the site.

18. Pole Numerals

A numeric font designed for use in your poster projects

This numerals-only font has been created to give maximum impact to your poster designs. The work of Portuguese designer Pedro Azedo, the shadow version of this font is free to download.

Next page: Free icons for graphic designers

Icons are everywhere these days, and not just on digital devices. Even in print, signage and other media, well-designed icons can convey an enormous amount of information quickly and easily, helping to keep your layouts clean and clear. Here are some of the best free icon packs that we've seen recently...

19. Fifty Mini Icons

These mini icons are top quality, and free to download

Designed by Victor Erixon, 50 Mini Icons is a set of high-quality mini icons for use in your design projects.

20. Camping Line Icons

These camping icons are free for personal and business use

These line icons on the theme of camping are the creation of illustrator Memed Nur. They’re free for both commercial and personal use.

21. Education Icons

An icon set with an academic theme from Graphic Pear

Created by Wassim, a Lebanese designer for Graphic Pear, this set of icons covers a range of academic and educational concepts, and is free to download for use in your design projects as long as you register for free membership of the site.

22. Ninety Free Line and Solid Icons

From one of the makers of Marvel, a great set of 90 icons

Murat Mutlu Resources has teamed up with Budi Tanrim, one of the co-founders of Marvelapp,  to provide you with this superb set of 90 line and solid icons for Sketch and Illustrator, for free.

23. Free Camcons

These icons are perfect for a photography-themed design

Spice up your designs with this set of 59 free photography-related icons, created by Davey Heuser, the interface designer for the Bundle iOS app.

24. Supermarket Icons Free

These supermarket-related icons are available in PSD format

This set of icons was created by The Eyecons exclusively for the Dribbble community. These supermarket-related icons are great for use in your design projects, and are available to download for free in PSD format.

25. Free Weather Icons

Download these weather icons as either PSD or Sketch files

This icon set from a calendar project has been open sourced for use in your own design projects. These weather icons are available as both PSD and Sketch files.

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