Even if ProteusThemes could make the most beautiful theme in the world, it is what you do with it next that really counts. We want your WordPress sites to look great, feel great, and convert as well as possible; so we thought we should share some of our favourite free design resources with you. Here are our top 10 tips for taking your site’s aesthetics to the next level:
Pixabay is always a good place to start your search for materials. They have over 700,000 images on there, made up of stock photos, illustrations and vectors. Furthermore, their search feature is impeccable, so whatever your project, we’re sure you’ll find something perfect.
PicJumbo is definitely our choice if you have a restaurant, cafe or generally food-based website. They do have some first class stuff in their other categories, but just scrolling through their food tags is enough to make your mouth water.
Textures is the first choice if you have bought one of our Construction Industry themes. Their dedicated ‘material’ categories cover just about every construction texture you could imagine. Although there are no construction “action” shots, their free images will make great a background for most industrial websites.
SubtlePatterns has a specific focus with a massive range of patterns, this niche approach is exactly why we love to use them. Within their huge pattern collection you will find the perfect background for everything from a funky personal blog to a serious e-commerce site. And just about everything in between.
IM Free has a stylish and very well categorized collection of free images. They don’t have quite the volume of some of our other suggestions, but what they do offer is extremely high quality. This is an especially great resource if you’re running a stylish, niche commercial site.
Image Credit: jesseclockwork
AllTheFreeStock is packed with resources… photos, videos, fonts, icons, they have it all. This is a site definitely worth spending a bit of time with. If you want to go beyond just making your site look tiptop, they also have some nice Email Templates so your communications can be just as beautiful.
Gratisography is definitely one for the creative souls. The amazing thing about this resource is that every single photo on there was captured by one guy, Ryan Mcguire. He undoubtedly has a very special talent for photography and is gracious enough to offer everything for free, with very few copyright restrictions.
SplitShire is another one-man photography project. Daniel Nanescu has a huge huge collection of photographs available here. Every category is impressive but we really recommend you take a look at his Landscapes. He has some truly breathtaking material and for smaller amounts of downloads, it’s completely free of charge.
New Old Stock will bring an authentic vintage touch to any website. Firstly, it’s great because all of their images are legitimately old-school, from historical events to everyday scenes from around the world. In addition, all the pictures are from public archives, so there’s no need to worry about licensing and attribution.
CreativeCommons non-profit organization is a wonderful amalgamation of design resources. You can use their homepage to search a vast array of image, video and sound materials. As with all of these resources, be sure to double check the licensing terms as some materials may require special attributions or be restricted for some use cases.
