Research Guides: Graphic Design: Free Design Tools & Resources

Free Design Tools and Resources

Adobe Color CC
Includes a color wheel for generating color schemes; can choose from different types of schemes, including analogous, monochromatic, complementary, and more.
Coolors
Allows you to generate color schemes; particularly helpful for finding hues and shades of a color.
Paletton
A designer tool for creating color combinations that work together well.
Accessible Colors
Accessibility is an important consideration in design; this site lets you know if your text and background colors create a contrast ratio that meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.
ColorBrewer
Tool for developing color palettes for data visualizations.

Google Fonts
Extensive catalog of open-source designer web fonts.
Font Squirrel
Collection of free fonts licensed for commercial use; check license to learn more about how each font can be used.
Installing Fonts (FontSpring)
Quick info on font file types and how to install on PC and Mac.
Meet the Ipsums
Fun dummy text generator to use as placeholders in your projects
Adobe Fonts
Curated by Adobe for use in their editing suite of programs. Must have Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.

Creative Commons Image Search
Search for Creative Commons licensed images through a variety of sites, including Google Images, Flickr, and Wikimedia Commons, and use the content in your own multimedia projects.
Google Images
On the results page, go to tools > usage rights and select different licenses.
Unsplash
Free, high resolution images that do not require permission to use. Attribution is not required but encouraged.
Pixabay
Pixabay has images, video, illustrations and vector graphics that are made available under the Pixabay license. You can use the content for free, for commerical and non-commerical projects, and attribution is not required, but encouraged.
Disabled and Here collection
This collection is a disability-led effort to provide free and inclusive stock photos shot from our own perspective, featuring disabled BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) across the Pacific Northwest.

Noun Project
Over a million curated icons; available under Creative Commons attribution license.
Flaticon
Free vector icons; attribution required.

Canva
Online graphic design platform that allows users to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content. Free and paid versions available.
Visme
Allows users to create infographics and presentations
Piktochart
Allows users to make infographics and visuals using themed templates. Good for beginner designers. Free and paid version available
Adobe Express
Create social graphics, websites and videos on the web and mobile versions. Free version available.
SlidesGo
A variety of free presentation templates for Google Slides and PowerPoint

Poster Printing at the Student Multimedia Design Center
Print posters up to 36" wide easily at the SMDC. This page includes information about pricing and paper type as well as directions and templates for designing posters with PowerPoint.
Poster Printing in UD's Smith Hall
Print posters up to 41.5" wide. Smith hall only accepts department purpose codes; cash and checks not accepted.
UD Style Guide
A downloadable PDF from the Office of Communication and Marketing; includes info about copy tone, university logos, fonts, and color palettes. Recommended for creating designs representing UD.
University of Delaware logos
Official university logos available for download. The UD style guide includes information on how logos should be used.
UD Accessibility
UD resources on how to develop robust and accessible websites, videos, documents and other media. Guidelines, training and other resources available to the UD community.