Unsplash

Free

Beautiful, free photos. This is by far my favorite place to find photos. You’ll actually be hard pressed to find a bad photo on this website. Sometimes that causes issues, though. It can feel like you’re trying to prepare a five-course meal, but all you have to work with is caviar.

Nasa

Free

The photos Nasa publishes are free for public use. You’ll find some awesome photos of space, astronauts, and bureaucrats.

Pixabay

Free

These royalty-free photos have a more “stock” feel to them, which can be a good thing at times. Sometimes you just need a photo of a rubber duck with two sets of wings against a cheesy fake backdrop.

Creative Commons

Free

I rarely find anything I’m looking for on Creative Commons, but hey, it’s free! Yay. There are some people who like it, though. Allegedly, you can also find music, video, and sound effects there.

Death to Stock

Free & Paid

Death to Stock publishes photos in free packs, each pack tailored around a certain theme. They tout photos that represent an antithesis to the traditional “stock photo” look. The photos are high-quality, but their usefulness is limited to your need for photos included in one of their published collections.

iStock

Paid

If you need resort paid stock photography to find that perfect image, iStock is one of the more affordable options.

Shutterstock

Paid

Maybe the biggest name in stock, Shutterstock has a staggering selection of photos. They also have some music and video.

Getty Images

Very, Very Paid

Getty Images is on the premium side of stock photography. They tend to be pretty expensive and have very restrictive licensing options. I mean, look at that handshake. No wonder.

Google Fonts

Free

Google Fonts is an amazing collection of free, open-source fonts with a beautiful interface to boot. If you’re new to design and typography, it’s hard to go wrong with font choice if you sort the fonts by “Popular” and stick to the top.

Font Squirrel

Free

Font Squirrel also has a decent assortment of free fonts.

Pixelbuddha

Free & Paid

If you’re looking for some free hand-drawn, authentic-style fonts, Pixelbuddha may have something you can use. They also have a buncha other fun stuff, so I’ll link to them again in other categories.

Typekit

Free & Paid

Typekit allows you to “subscribe” to a set number of fonts at a time, which sync with the Adobe programs you have on your system allowing use of those fonts. You can also purchase fonts from Typekit. Something about Typekit’s user interface has always rubbed me the wrong way, but that’s neither here nor there.

Envato Market Fonts

Free & Paid

Among the sea of creative assets for sale on Envato are a large assortment of mostly hand-crafted fonts. The pricing is usually pretty competitive. Also, if you give them your email they’ll spam you with free junk all the time.

Myfonts

Paid

When you’re ready to start investing in some fancy, professional fonts, Myfonts is a solid vendor.

Fonts.com

Paid

Fonts.com is another good vendor. I tend to prefer Myfonts.com’s slightly better browsing features.

Fontspring

Paid

If you need even moar fonts, Fontspring is yet another option.

Subtle Patterns

Free

High-quality seamless patterns. They also have a nifty Photoshop plugin you can buy that lets you apply patterns directly in Photoshop.

Graphic Burger

Free

Graphic Burger has a great collection of quality textures.

Pixel Buddha

Free

Again? Yup. Pixel Buddha has a few textures and patterns worth checking out, among their other goodies.

Graphic Pear

Free

Graphic Pear has some very nice patterns.

Unsplash

Free

You can also find some photos of textures on Unsplash. I actually went ahead and gathered this fairly large collection of textures on Unsplash for my own your convenience. Ok, ok, some of these are just photos with textured elements in them, but hey, it’s the thought that counts.

The Pattern Library

Free

If you’re looking for fun, seamless, bold, meticulously crafted patterns, look no further than The Pattern Library.

Kyle Brushes

Free

I’m not even going to link to other brush sources. These brushes for Photoshop by Kyle T. Webster cover an enormous range of mediums, and I honestly haven’t found any brushes that compare in quality. If you’re painting in Photoshop, I highly recommend you ditch the defaults and download these gems.

Adobe Color CC

Free

Adobe Color CC is probably a good first choice when looking for or developing a color palette. The fact that it lets you share any palette you create across all your other Adobe programs or with other people makes it very useful.

Coolors

Free

Coolors makes finding colors fun. It packs a lot of features for adjusting and tweaking colors and lets you lock the ones you like while randomly generating more. When you find something you like, just save and/or download the palette and try something new. It also gives each color a name to spice things up.

Color Hunt

Free

Color Hunt is a compilation of color palettes designed and submitted by humans. Antediluvian, right? There are some pretty cool palettes that have risen to the top of their “popular” filter.

Flat UI Colors

Free

I guess it’s in the name. Flat UI Colors is a collection of color palettes that have been painstakingly designed to integrate with user interface design.

UI Gradients

Free

Sick of solid colors? UI Gradients gives you a garrison of ready-made gradients that have been tailored to work well on screens.

Adobe Assets Market

Free

This link takes you to page with instructions on how to access the Adobe Assets Market via your Adobe CC application. You can find many mockups, templates, graphics, and other useful resources in their assets market.

Graphic Burger

Free

Graphic Burger has an awesome selection of mockups ranging from print to digital.

Pixel Buddha

Free

Pixel Buddha is here again with a bunch of goodies including design templates, mockups, and graphics.

Graphic Pear

Free & Paid

Graphic Pear is another good place to find lots of design resources ranging from mockups and templates to icons and graphics.

Graphic Berry

Free

I’ve found Graphic Berry to be slightly lower in quality when it comes to mockups, but it’s doesn’t hurt to check it out.

UI Space

Free

UI Space has a decent mass of free design resources centered around digital design.

LStore

Free & Paid

LStore Graphics creates some of my favorite mockups out there. Their free content is superb their paid mockups are well worth the price.

UI8

Free & Paid

UI8 is worth a look if you’re searching for mockups, templates, and other resources related to design for digital platforms.

Creative Market

Paid

Creative Market is a megastore of templates, mockups, and other assets available for purchase.

Envato Market

Paid

Envato tends to target the digital space with a diverse array of templates and other resources for purchase.

Bēhance

Free & Paid

A little searching on Bēhance can net you some great mockups and templates made by other designers, many of which are offered for free. People really are swell.

YouTube Audio Library

Free

If you need something free, YouTube has a library of free songs and sound effects. You do get what you pay for, though. And so do the other several million people using the exact same song.

SoundCloud

Free

If you can find them, SoundCloud has some free-to-use songs.

Audio Library YouTube Channel

Free

There is some overlap here with the YouTube Audio Library. The difference is that this is a channel, so you can search, view, and organize the content like a channel, which can be helpful.

Pond5

Paid

Pond5 is especially equipped to service filmmakers with their enormous library of music, sound effects, stock video, and even After Effects assets. I’ll list them again in the video section for consistency’s sake.

Artlist

Paid

For $199/year at the time of this post, Artlist allows you to download any and all songs contained in their enormous, diverse, and ever-expanding library. For the most part, they do a great job of providing music devoid of that cheesy “stock” sound. If you plan on making a lot of video content, this is a great deal.

Epidemic Sound

Paid

Epidemic Sound is another very affordable stock music site, and they have sound effects too!

Premium Beat

Paid

Premium Beat is a little pricey, but they are known for high-quality product.

Song Freedom

Paid

Song Freedom is very cool because it lets you license songs from some pretty big name artists including the likes of Imagine Dragons and X Ambassadors. The selection of name-brand artists is a little limited, but it’s pretty cool that it exists at all.

Motion Pulse Blackbox by Video Copilot

Paid

Video Copilot has put created a legendary group of sound effects packs. These are a very worthwhile consideration when looking for sound effects.

SFX by Lens Distortions

Paid

These sound effects by Lens Distortion will help you achieve a very cinematic atmosphere in your production.

Pro Sound Effects Library

Paid

If you’re looking for an industrial-strength answer to your sound effects needs, Pro Sound Effects offers a heavy-duty solution for a heavy-duty price. Upon purchase, they’ll send you a 1-3TB hard drive loaded with your chosen sound effects library complete with its own search software.

Videezy

Free & Paid

Videezy has an assortment of free video clips for use in your projects. It’s limited but the footage is generally of good quality.

Pond5

Free & Paid

Pond5 has a large array of video resources including stock video, titles, and After Effects assets.

The Futur

The Business of Design

This is probably the most valuable channel you can follow if you want to do any sort of design. There is a staggering amount of need-to-know information and you don’t already follow them you should probably go start watching their videos now. Bye.

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe publishes lots of good video content on their programs and the creative process.

Learn Squared

Advanced Production Skills

Learn Squared offers you a variety of design production skills taught by people at the top of their respective fields. It was founded by motion title designer and living legend Ash Thorp who designed many of the titles and digital artwork for works such as Ghost in the Shell,  Blade Runner 2049, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Enders Game, Assassin Creed Origins, and Call of Duty Infinite Warfare, to name a few. You can find several classes taught by Ash himself.

Mac Square

Mac Apps

This channel has some great intro-level tutorials for various programs like After Effects and Photoshop as well as other Mac apps. Luke also couldn’t have been more than 13 when he started making tutorials, which goes to show you it’s never to early to start sharing what you know.

Roberto Blake

Design Industry

Roberto Blake shares lots of insights into being a creative.

Will Paterson

Hand Lettering

Will Paterson teaches hand lettering, graphic design and logo design.

Phlearn

Free & Paid

Phlearn is a prolific source for Photoshop and photography knowledge. It’s a great place to start if you’re just getting into digital photo manipulation.

Tutvid

Photoshop

Tutvid exposes you to the features of programs like Photoshop of which you might not be aware. Lots of useful info here.

Creatnprocess

Illustrator

Creatnprocess is a great source for training and techniques in Illustrator.

Dan Gartman

Illustrator

Dan Gartman has many good tutorials on Illustrator techniques.

Video Copilot

After Effects

The one, the only, Andrew Kramer from Video Copilot, dot net! Andrew Kramer makes what are quite possibly the best tutorials ever made. Those tutorials happen to be for After Effects, so get ready to make some cool stuff and have a blast doing it.

Dope Motions

After Effects

Dope Motions illustrates a variety of After Effects techniques on his channel.

Easy After Effects

Photoshop. Just kidding— After Effects

You can find some very useful techniques in After Effects on the Easy After Effects channel.

ECAbrams

After Effects

ECAbrams teaches you some more advanced concepts and tools inside of After Effects.

Motion Science

After Effects

Motion Science gives some great visual explanations of some key concepts in motion design in After Effects.

Red Giant

After Effects

Red Giant actually makes some very high-level After Effects tutorials, although, they do make use of their Trapcode plugins which are a bit pricey.

School of Motion

After Effects

School of Motion has a great series of motion design tutorials, ranging from beginner-level to advanced.

Ukramedia

After Effects

Ukramedia is your one-stop-shop for learning expressions (coding with JavaScript) in After Effects. Expressions can allow you to do very powerful things when you get the hang of them.

Workbench

After Effects

Workbench gives you many short and sweet After Effects techniques.

Andrey Labrov

Cinema 4D

Andrey Labrov does a good job of explaining some key concepts in the field of 3D motion design.

Christoph Doe

Cinema 4D

Not to be confused with Chris Do of The Futur. This is an awesome place to get started if you want to learn Cinema 4D.

Daniel Danielsson

Cinema 4D

Daniel Danielsson is quickly becoming one of my favorite sources for tutorials. He teaches Cinema 4D and After Effects with a dry, delightful suave humor that makes his lessons entertaining while being informative.

Elementza

Cinema 4D

Learning modeling in Cinema 4D? Start here!

Eyedesyn

Cinema 4D

Eyedesyn teaches you some great stuff in Cinema 4D.

Greyscalegorilla

Cinema 4D

What they lack in conciseness, they make up for with sheer volume of useful content. Greyscalegorilla is the biggest name in Cinema 4D education.

MaxonC4D

Cinema 4D

Maxon themselves have a large number of tutorials for their product, Cinema 4D.

VideoSmile

After Effects, Cinema 4D

Now, these tutorials aren’t in English, but the English version of After Effects so you can still follow along and pick up some useful techniques.

Cinematography Design

Cinematography, Cinema 4D

This guy knows his stuff. If you want to advance your knowledge of lighting and cinematography, this a great channel to explore.

Every Frame A Painting

Film, Cinematography

If you’re interested in film and cinematography, I highly encourage you to watch these videos. They are insightful looks at key concepts in the world of filmmaking and story telling. He walks through examples and rich analysis of things such as framing, comedy, acting, and story structure.

Caler Edwards

Ui/Ux Design

Caler Edwards walks you through user interface design and is very worth checking out if you’re interested in Ui/Ux design.

Chris Courses

Ui/Ux Design

Chris shows you how to do some amazing things with coding for web. His videos cover advanced topics, but they are approachable and entertaining enough for beginners who are interested in Javascript or web design.

CharliMarieTV

Ui/Ux Design

Charli Marie discusses a number of important topics surrounding Ux design and being a Ux designer. Her bubbly personality is refreshing in a world full of dry instructional videos.

Coding Tech

Coding

This channel mostly consists of talks and demos on current coding tech.

Daft Creation

Coding

Daft Creation makes short, simple videos on specific web design elements and how to code them.

DevTips

Coding

Devtips has a ton of great videos teaching you various coding and web design tools. They also teach it in a way that exemplifies creativity and critical thinking.

LevelUpTuts

Coding

If you’re looking for some good coding tutorials, Leveluptuts has a bunch.

Traversy Media

Coding

Traversy Media has many good tutorials that will help you get started in web design.

Travis Neilson

Coding, Critical Thinking

Travis Neilson, formerly of Devtips, is a great example when it comes to optimistic critical thinking, which is a highly undervalued skill. It’s worth listening to people who have that skill.

Brackeys

Game Dev, Unity

Asbjørn publishes hundreds of beautifully-crafted videos on game development and the Unity game engine. If you are at all interested in game design, you should check out this channel.

Mark Brown

Game Design Theory

Mark Brown publishes a series called The Gamemaker’s Toolkit. In it, you’ll find deep analysis of key concepts of game design.

Jason Levine

Audio Production

Jason Levine will get you started in the world of audio production.

Pinterest

Images

When it comes to drilling into a certain look and style and finding inspiration, reference images, or content around a certain vein of visual research, there’s really no beating Pinterest. Clicking this link will take you to my personal Pinterest profile where you can see how I leverage it in my own design research.

Behance

Images & Artists

Behance is a great place to browse and collect inspiration for all manner of creative projects.

Google Images

Top General Results

Pinterest is great for finding a rich variety of content, but sometimes you want to find the most common answer to your search. That’s where Google comes in.

Instagram

Images & Video

Instagram can be good for finding creative content and saving it to collections. If you’re trying to gather a mass of images though, I’ve found Pinterest to be superior.

Creative Bloq

Blog, News, Curation

Creative Bloq publishes a lot of great articles and tools for designers.

Concept Art World

Curation

Concept Art World is a great repository of concept are paintings by high-level artists.

Motionographer

Blog, Curation

Motionographer is possibly the best-known curator of motion design artistry.

Design Milk

News

Design Milk is a well-known publication for news and opinion in the design industry.

Core77

News

Core77 is a bastion for creative thought and divergent thinking.

The Dieline

Blog, Curation

The Dieline collects and features packaging design from around the world.

Fast Company | Co.Design

News

Fast Co.Design is a great source for general news in the design industry.

The Verge

News

The Verge is mostly devoted to futurology and tech news, but the world of design is so interwoven with technology that it’s often valuable as a designer to stay up-to-date with the latest on these subjects.

Pentagram

Design, Brand Identity

I’ll let the other agencies speak for themselves, but it’s worth noting that Pentagram is the top design agency in the world at the moment. I’ve listed the rest (approximately)in order of their size and influence. This is by no means a complete list.

Landor

Branding & Design

NiCE

Design, Branding

FutureBrand

Design, Branding

Saatchi & Saatchi

Design, Branding

Hyfn

Design, Branding

R/GA

Design, Branding

Blind

Design, Branding

This is Chris Do’s agency.

Fantasy

Design, Branding

Firstborn

Design, Branding

oui will

Design, Branding

Focus Lab

Design, Branding

Code and Theory

Design, Branding

Long Story Short Design

Design, Branding

With the longest name on the list, ironically.

Ramotion

Design, Branding

Grain & Mortar

Design, Branding

Instrument

Design, Branding

MK12

Design, Branding

Huge

Design, Branding

Big Spaceship

Design, Branding

Gotta love that name.

Photoshop

$52.99/Month with Adobe CC Subscription (All Apps Included)

MacOS, Windows
Photoshop is the industry standard for photo manipulation, photo compositing, and digital painting.

Illustrator

$52.99/Month with Adobe CC Subscription (All Apps Included)

Mac, Windows
Illustrator is the industry standard for vector graphics creation.

Indesign

$52.99/Month with Adobe CC Subscription (All Apps Included)

MacOS, Windows
Indesign is a staple when it comes to layout design for print.

Affinity Photo

$49.99

MacOS, Windows, iOS, Android
Affinity Photo is a good alternative to Photoshop.

Affinity Designer

$49.99

MacOS, Windows
Affinity Designer is a good alternative to Illustrator.

Lightroom

$52.99/Month with Adobe CC Subscription (All Apps Included)

MacOS, Windows, iOS
Lightroom will dramatically speed up your photo retouching workflow, especially for large amounts of photos.

Pixlr

Free

Web Browser
If you’re looking for a free alternative to Photoshop, Pixlr is a good choice.

Vectr

Free

Web Browser, Windows, MacOS
If you don’t have access to Illustrator, Vectr is a good tool for creating vector graphics.

Snapseed

Free

iOS, Android
Snapseed is a beautiful, minimal photo editing app with a rich set of features.

Procreate

$9.99

iPad Pro, iPad 2018
Procreate is the best painting and illustration app out there. It’s truly a joy to use.

Adobe Experience Design

$52.99/Month with Adobe CC Subscription (All Apps Included)

MacOS, Windows
Adobe XD lets you rapidly design and build user interface wireframes and prototypes.

Framer

Free

Web Browser
Framer is one of the several free user interface design tools floating around.

Sketch

$99

MacOS
Sketch has become the industry standard for user interface design. Sadly, it’s only available to Mac users.

Atom

Free

MacOS, Windows
Atom is a text editor built for coding. If you’re doing any amount of coding or scripting, Atom has a multitude of features and add-ons that take a lot of the pain out of the process.

Sublime Text

Free

MacOS, Windows
Sublime Text is another well-loved coding program in the same vein as Atom. You’ll need to purchase the pro version to unlock some of its better features, though.

Xcode

Free

MacOS
Xcode is Apple’s tool for building apps for Mac and iOS.

Codekit

$34

MacOS
Codekit is a crazy useful tool that automatically compiles a host of different coding languages like SASS and Coffeescript.

Prepos

$29

MacOS, Windows
Prepos is another great compiler. It’s also available for Windows!

iMovie

Free

MacOS, iOS
If you have a Mac, you’re bootstrapping, and you need to edit together a video, iMove is a classic choice.

Screenflow

$129

MacOS
Screenflow actually markets itself as a video editing program. It’s decent for editing together video, but what makes it worth buying is actually its phenomenal screen recording tools.

Premiere Pro

$52.99/Month with Adobe CC Subscription (All Apps Included)

MacOS, Windows
Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro are the industry standards for video editing.

Final Cut Pro

$299.99

MacOS
If you’re not interested in an Adobe subscription and you work on Mac, Final Cut Pro is an industry favorite for professional video editing.

DaVinci Resolve

Free

MacOS, Windows
DaVinci Resolve a fully professional video editing program that’s free. Some of its strengths include node-based editing and intricate color correction tools.

After Effects

$52.99/Month with Adobe CC Subscription (All Apps Included)

MacOS, Windows
After Effects is one of my favorite programs of all time. The range of effects you can create is almost limitless, and its growing integration with Cinema 4D further expands its capabilities.

Nuke

$9,768

Windows, MacOS
Nuke is a node-based video compositing and editing program for industry professionals.

TV Paint

$500

MacOS, Windows
TV Paint is an industry-tested digital painting and animation tool for film and cinema.

Cinema 4D

$3,510.25

MacOS, Windows
Cinema 4D is a very powerful 3D program geared for 3D special effects and scene creation. Most cool CGI and flashy effects you see these days were probably made in C4D, at least in part.

Houdini

$269-$4,495

MacOS, Windows
Houdini is a powerful, completely node-based 3D program. If procedural 3D programs are what you’re looking for, Houdini is the crème de la crème.

3DS Max

$1,505/Year

MacOS, Windows
3DS Max has given way to Cinema 4D when it comes to 3D scene creation. It’s more heavily used in the game graphics industry.

Maya

$1,505/Year

MacOS, Windows
Maya is one of several industry-standard programs for 3D modeling games and film.

Zbrush

$895

MacOS, Windows
Zbrush is another industry-standard program for 3D modeling in gaming and film.

SolidWorks

$3,995

MacOS, Windows
Solidworks is becoming the standard for industrial design 3D design.

AutoCAD

$1,575/Year

MacOS, Windows
AutoCAD is the standard for industrial design and architecture in much of the industry today.

Rhino

$995

MacOS, Windows
Rhino is a very popular 3D design program in the product design space.

Redshift Renderer

$500

Many professional motion designers invest in third-party rendering engines. Redshift is very cool because it allows you to harness the power of your GPU.

V-Ray Renderer

$1,100

VRay is a name-brand rendering engine that’s particularly popular for 3DS Max.

Octane Renderer

$399

Octane is known for giving you lightning-fast, photo-realistic results.

Arnold Renderer

$615/Year

Arnold is known for being rock-solid and giving you very high-quality results.

X-Particles

$718.69

X-Particles has become a must-have plugin for Cinema 4D due to its immensely powerful particle effects.

GarageBand

Free

MacOS
GarageBand is a classic choice for audio production if you’re on a budget or just starting out in sound production.

Audacity

Free

MacOS, Windows
Audacity is a great free program for audio recording and production.

Audition

$52.99/Month with Adobe CC Subscription (All Apps Included)

MacOS, Windows
Audition is a powerful professional audio production tool.

Logic Pro X

$199.99

MacOS
Logic Pro is a very powerful sound and music production tool for professionals.