12 Years of Freepik Company, 12 Years of Inspiring Visuals

Wouldn’t it be inspiring to find all the best visual resources in one place? And that those images were the most attractive and useful for every project? Wouldn’t it be great to give every designer in the world the chance to work with top-quality images and help them finish faster? In fact, wouldn’t it be great to be able to work better and spend more time doing the things we love? 

These were the simple questions asked by three friends named Alejandro Sanchez (graphic designer), Pablo Blanes (photographer), and Joaquin Cuenca (programmer) and that gave life to Freepik Company, one of the fastest-growing European companies. But how did they get to the top? 

Visuals From Malaga

The Iberian Peninsula offers some of the most attractive destinations in the world and Malaga is one of its most outstanding cities. The Costa del Sol is one of the most popular places to take your vacations and go sightseeing; however, 12 years ago it was not quite so popular as a destination for technology companies. Succeeding in the business world from these beaches was perhaps one of the most difficult feats to achieve – although this was no barrier for these friends.

Many would have chosen to take their first steps from a city like Madrid or Barcelona – since they didn’t have the resources, options, and contacts to do it from Silicon Valley – but these entrepreneurs chose not to overlook their roots, and to set up the headquarters of Freepik Company in this beautiful city and become one of its flagship companies. 

Inspiring Milestones

2010: Iberian Inspiration

The year of our birth. However, Freepik Company was just the beginning, the tip of the iceberg. Founding this platform loaded with visual resources meant starting work to detect how we could simplify the lives of designers and creators around the world. 

2013: Iconic Birth

Ever since web design first appeared, icons have been gaining importance. In fact, today most projects involve some digital aspect. Therefore, since their appearance, it seems logical to think that the designers and creators of the world will constantly need new graphic resources for their work – 

beautiful, practical, varied resources, and above all, in a wide variety of formats. With that in mind, Flaticon was born. It’s the world’s largest database of free customizable icons.

First came the icons, then a world of solutions: an online editor, stickers, and UIcons. The platform not only offers you the resources you need for your projects but also provides you with plenty of inspiration since you’ll find new elements every week. Plus, you can edit and customize them before downloading them. Say what? Does that mean optimizing your work so that you can finish your projects much faster? 

Well, yes. That’s exactly what it means.

2015: Inspiring Contributors

3 designers became 5, then 6, and 10. Growth is in our DNA, however, to keep developing we needed to open the doors to the whole world. Literally. 

This was the year that collaborators began to add their grain of sand, project by project. Basically, any creator could showcase their work on Freepik Company, inspiring the entire planet, and yes, getting paid to do so.

2016/2017: Creative Minds That Inspire

Seeing the work of such amazing contributors inspired us to share the fruit of Freepik Company’s creativity. That’s why, during 2016 we started to generate and offer our own resources, thanks to the efforts of our best designers, photographers, and illustrators. 

Thus was born our in-house production team, where day by day we produce the visuals that are shared on our platform under the name Freepik and Pikisuperstar.

Thanks to all these achievements, merits, and milestones, the world turned its head to look at our city and in 2017 we were mentioned in the Financial Times ranking as the fastest-growing European company in the Media category.

2019: We Present Presentations

A presentation can be motivating and didactic, or it can provoke yawns and have a certain soporific power.

This led us to detect a very interesting opportunity involving helping those who use them in their everyday lives. And that led to the birth of Slidesgo. 

If you’re after more attention, the secret is to try our platform, with its unique designs, where you can find the best templates designed to suit the themes of your presentations and talks.

At the educational level, it is essential to awaken the interest of young people in certain topics, so our templates have become vital tools because their attractive designs help to capture students’ attention, motivating and inspiring them.

As for the business world, nothing sells an idea better than an eye-catching and entertaining presentation, in which the strategic points to sell are clearly captured.

2022: 12 Inspiring Years

And here we are. 

715 words, 12 years of history, and more than 26,000,000 visual resources later. Since Freepik Company was born, many things have changed; however, the goal has always been the same, to find an answer to that question that three friends asked themselves in 2010: Wouldn’t it be great to give all the designers in the world the possibility to work with quality images and thus help them unleash their creativity resource by resource?

Well, that’s what has inspired us to work for so long, and we want to keep doing it so that you can continue to inspire with each of your projects. 

That’s also why we want to thank you. Without your support, pieces, and projects, without the users and collaborators, we would never have gotten where we are today. 

When we say we’re 12 years old, we know it’s also thanks to you.