Updated list of great freebies for your production enjoyment. Here are ten that you might find valuable from comic book art to specialized fonts and eLearning templates.
1. Handwritten Fonts
This is a nice collection of handwritten fonts that can give your designs personality, particularly when simulating handwritten notes or going after a casual ambiance in titles or subtitles. For lengthy reading and even paragraphs read on digital devices, many designers agree that a sans serif fonts is best. A handwritten font may decrease readability.
2. Noun Project Icons
This website has nearly a million free and low-cost icons you can search through and download. Use these icons in diagrams, menus, content and as symbols for categories. Use of free icons required giving credit to the contributor according to the Creative Commons Attributions License.
3. Usability Guidelines
This is a great resource of research-based guidelines to provide best practices over a broad range of web design and digital communications issues. Includes accessibility, page layout, links, navigation and more. From the US government.
4. Comic Book Characters and Scenes
Design Comics offers illustrated characters and scenes for free. The downloads come in an Open Document Presentation format and also as source files in common graphic formats. The site also includes an example comic.
5. Creative Market
Creative Market offers free visual design assets every week, including graphics, illustrations, web templates and fonts. Registration and login is required.
6. Cartoon Speech Bubbles
To go along with the characters and scenes above or to use with photos, you might want speech bubbles that are more unique than the call-outs that come with PowerPoint. Free Stock Photos.biz offers a nice collection for free download.
7. eLearning Templates
The eLearning Brothers offer free eLearning templates for PowerPoint, Storyline, Captivate and more. They also offer other assets just for signing up on their site.
8. Sound Effects
The Freesound project provides sound effect samples through a Creative Commons license. Registration required.
9. Storyboard Templates
Storyboard templates are the most popular download on this site. There are many to choose from, both visual and text-based that were contributed from your friends in the eLearning community.
10. Textures
Download free textures from Texture Lovers that you can add to the background of slides or other graphics. It’s best to use textures in places where they will not be more prominent than text or other important graphic elements.
Bonus: 100 Free User Interface Icons (SVG Format)
Everything you’d need for menus and navigation. You can convert SVG to PNG if the format isn’t compatible with your authoring tool.
Always so generous with your wonderful knowledge Connie x
They’re freebies are pretty unusual, aren’t they? Glad you liked it!
Love love LOVE the comic book designer. Thanks for providing me with hours of enjoyment!
Glad you like them, John. I too am feeling inspired by those comic book characters. Have to wait for the right content but can’t wait to use them.
Thanks Doug. So glad these will help improve eLearning for all! What a goal.
Great list and wonderful tools. We’re trying to beat the old read and click web based training and these tools along with all the information contained in the links will definitely be benificial.
Thank you for these links – really helpful! The comic book characters alone are extremely valuable – so much can be done with them!
Thanks again!
Thanks for the kind words, Saundra. Schooling is a good foundation and experience is great for applying what you’ve learned. I think you’ll be happy you have both over time.
Great list. I’ve been studying and collecting material for a while now. This is a very comprehensive list. I’ve learned so much from your site. Thank you. I’m looking forward to when I can apply some of my learning. I have a Masters degree however had not sought positions, I’m feel hands on expereince and sites like this will out weigh the formal education in the long run.
I’m glad you find it useful, Jen.
A great list! Thanks for sharing.