Designers helping designers: The rise of graphic resources websites

Before the age of computers and Adobe programs, designers had to do everything from scratch. At the most, they had tools like stencils, curve rulers, and scratchable typography. Nowadays on the other hand, designers have a huge array of visual resources to help them to create designs faster and more efficiently.

The first ever digital graphic design resources used to come in floppy disks and then cd roms, or box sets of CDs. We used to call it clipart back then. Can you imagine having to look through hundreds of disks to find just the right thing? The same applied to stock photography!

Well it’s not much different than scrolling the internet, is it? At least now the amount of available resources is huge and we can always find what we need.

In the past years, the variety of sites offering free graphic design resources like unique fonts, backgrounds, icons, and mockups has been growing steadily in the online space. Some of the biggest and most diverse are Freepik, Flaticon, Creative Market and Fontbundles. Freepik, for example, offers vector graphics, icons, illustration, and photography while Fontbundles only offers fonts and typography. Every site is different but the best sites are the ones that have their own unique content and not a generic collection found on many sites at once.

What we love about it

The best part about these sites is that it is essentially designers helping designers. Some design for clients while other design for other designers. Some do both! A lot of designers start creating resources for these sites to get their work seen by a wider audience and then people who see their offers hire them for special projects.

If you are designer that loves creating icons, why not sell them or give away a few to other designers? If you love illustration, why keep all that artwork in your files if they can be used by your peers?

It is arguable that now that there is so much available for designers to pretty much cut and paste into a new design, that “anyone can be a designer.” But it’s actually a bit like photography, if you have a creative eye, photos taken with a phone can be amazing, while others who lack the experience will take unimpressive photos with the fanciest of cameras.

It all depends what a person does with the resources, designer or not.

And best of all, designers can make money! There are to ways in which designers can earn by creating designs for these resource websites. One is to be a hired designer and get paid per design and the other is to earn according to what they sell.

As a hired designer (like on Freepik), designers have weekly tasks to design a set amount of graphics that are expected from them. They can earn more if they have time to make more. Since these designs are unique to Freepik, they are revised by art directors in charge of quality control whose job is to make sure all designs are top notch.

For sites where designers make money according to how many copies they sell, it can take some hard work to create all the resources but once they are out there and selling, the money just comes in. Of course, the success of each resource depends on the overall quality and how much effort the designer puts into promoting it. For sites like Creative Market, the designer has free range as to what they can sell but to really make any money from their designs, they need to keep up with trends. Also if their designs are not featured, they won’t sell.

Following the rules of each site when using the resources

Some graphic design resource websites offer subscription packages and others sell products on their own. Most offer lots of free resources that don’t need attribution while others ask for an embedded link.

In paid plans, the designs come with a commercial license and you don’t have to give attribution at all. Always make sure to read the guidelines for each site to know what they permit in their license. Most, like Freepik, will let you use a downloaded design as part of a larger creation but not as the main element.

Apart from general licenses and subscriptions, some products have individual licensing regulations, for example, they might give a one-use license or an infinite use license. You really just have to check each specs list for all the products you are interested in. If in doubt, email the designer or the help section of the site where you are searching.

How to join the resources sites as a designer

Becoming a regular contributor for a graphic design resource websites is not too complicated. Applying and opening a virtual store is usually quite easy. What is not as easy is being consistent with creating stuff to offer.

This is a pretty comprehensive list of the kinds of resources you could potentially create and make money with (and make other designers’ lives easier.)

• Decorative Alphabets
• Icons
• Backgrounds
• Patterns
• Illustrations
• Mockups
  • Business cards
  • Brochures
  • Ebooks
  • Devices
  • Desks
  • Wall art
  • Logo and branding
• Watercolor shapes
• Ink Splatters
• Borders and frames
• Blog and social media headers you can join the Freepik contributor network HERE. To become a regular contributor you must pass a design test and once you are in, you start earning by creating designs. You won’t depend on sales like on Creative Market.
  

  Over to you

  Do you design for resource websites? Are you a Freepik designer? Leave a comment for our readers telling them how much you love it here!