There’s a lot that goes into a good design – from typography choices, audience engagement to layouts, and more.
But did you know that adding illustrations to your website, content, social media feeds, and other marketing materials is pretty much the best strategy for making yourself stand out?
It’s cliché, but it’s true – a picture really is worth a thousand words. According to psychologists, people need about 1/10 of a second to get a general perception of a visual element. (This speed is obviously impossible when it comes to textual items!)
But what to do if you don’t have enough visual material?
Creating your own vector art can be a real pain, and so, so tiresome. We don’t all have the luxury of hitting up our favorite graphic designer for a quick image.
Luckily, the internet has a bounty of free vector images— and they’re far from being dull and uninspiring, there’s some excellent quality to be found.
Since we’re always looking for ways to help minimize your stress levels, we have rounded up the very best websites offering free vectors, so get your bookmarks ready. Here we go!
1. Open Doodles
If you are looking to add hand-drawn elements on your web pages, Open Doodles is ideal for you. You can download the entire set of free illustrations to reuse anywhere. Be it on your website, app onboarding screens, landing pages, or even a t-shirt.
On Open Doodles, you will also find the behind the scenes videos, in which the creator, Pablo Stanley takes you through the process of creating the illustration library and the project landing pages using Webflow.
Free for commercial use, these doodles are available in SVG, PNG and animated GIF formats.
Thanks to Pablo Stanley for sharing this freebie!
Read more: Best GIF Websites and Blogs You Must-Not Miss!
2. Vector4Free
The illustrations on this site are added by artists from all over the world and range from comical cartoons to neutral icons and illustrations for business and technology.
You can search for vectors by entering their desired keywords or selecting from a large list of categories at the bottom of the page. Vector4Free doesn’t have the biggest collection on the internet, but it has got some really useful and free illustrations.
Tip: When downloading illustrations from this site, the files are either delivered in an AI or EPS format, so it’s worth ensuring you have the correct image editing software in order to edit them.
3. uNDraw
uNDraw is one of the rare platforms where you will be directly thrown into the image collection without having to navigate here and there to finally get to the actual images you want. Focused on people and technology, the illustrations are perfect for modern web design.
A really amazing feature that uNDraw offers is the ability to edit the main illustration color before downloading. This means you’ll always have a beautiful flat illustration to match your branding at all times. You can use them on your designs, websites, apps and any project really!
The illustrations are free for personal and commercial projects. No attribution required!
4. Illustratious
Illustratious is a library of modern flat style colorful illustrations that you can use in your projects for free. All you have to do is give attribution to the creator. Available to download in PNG format (2000×2000 px), the website has illustrated concepts for online learning, delivery services, stay at home, contact us and many more. Most of the illustrations on the website are free, however, some fall under the premium plan.
Download these free illustrations to class up your designs!
5. Drawkit
Drawkit has a stunning collection of fully customizable PSD illustrations covering various categories – abstract, education, business & finance, health and medical, design, art and many more. Each of the vectors is available in two versions – Bright Color and Monochrome.
To enjoy the features of the website, just proceed to its ‘Free Illustrations’ category, and there you will find what they could offer. All illustrations are available for use on both personal and commercial projects without the need for attribution.
If you need something a little more detailed, there’s a range of image packs containing up to 100 images available for purchase.
6. Ouch!
The folks at Icons8 created Ouch! which offers beautiful product illustrations to spice up your interfaces. On the website, you can find catchy illustrations in 20 different art styles – from flat and geometric illustrations to textured graphics and cartoonish vectors.
The illustrations are delivered in a PNG format for free, but they require an attribution link in return. If you purchase their subscription, you will get access to vector SVG files, and you won’t need to link back.
The site definitely has an unusual name but it also has some of the coolest looking free illustrations on the Internet!
7. IRADesign
IRADesigns aims to revolutionize the way of creating artistic illustrations. It is a great place to discover an amazing collection of free illustrations and to create custom ones too! Besides helping you convey the personality of your brand, the illustrations are highly flexible and can easily be adapted to a variety of purposes.
To edit the illustrations, all you need to do is download the pack and open them in your favorite image editing software. You can mix and match five available color gradients, customize different components (like backgrounds, characters and objects) and download everything for free.
8. Humaaans
As you might have guessed from the name, this site specializes in human illustrations. Created by Pablo Stanley, Humaaans is a collection of flat vector illustrations designed to be mixed and matched for use on any design project. Use it anytime you need to add an illustration featuring humans. Best part? You can also customize their positions, clothing, colors, and hairstyle.
9. Lucasz Adam
Lucasz Adam is an independent web designer who releases free SVG images every week, for anyone to use on their projects. No sign-up is required while using the website, and the images are free for personal and commercial use. You can use these images for whatever you like, as long as you provide proper attribution.
10. FreePik
FreePik is a search engine that helps to locate high-quality photos, vectors, icons, illustrations and PSD files for your creative projects. The website has over 800,000 free illustration vectors. There’s everything to choose from. You need illustrations of animals? How about silhouettes? You will find them all on Freepik. A particularly good option for infographics and calendar templates, Freepik is updated with new images daily.
The images on Freepik are free for personal and commercial use provided you attribute Freepik with a link to their website. If you would prefer to get rid of the need to attribute, you can sign up for a premium account for as little as €9.99 per month.
11. Vector Portal
Another website that features beautiful illustrations is Vector Portal. The site has a huge collection of graphics, icons, patterns, backgrounds and a lot more. If you are looking for illustrations that can add fun and visual appeal to your designs, use the ones available on Vector Portal.
No need to worry about the license, as the creators allow users to download, customize, and use all illustrations as they please, without even having to credit them.
12. Flaticon
Looking for vector icons to spice up your designs? Flaticon has got you covered. There’s the whole gamut of icons: strategy and management, friendship, e-commerce, marketing and SEO… you name it, Flaticon’s got it. With a collection of over 450,000 vector icons, Flaticon claims to be one of the largest databases of free vector icons on the web.
If you’re a designer yourself, you can offer them your icon sets, graphic designs and actually make money with them, so that’s a bonus.
Flaticon’s basic license mandates that photos are free to use as long as you include attribution.
13. Absurd Design
If you like your illustrations to be a little more quirky and original, take a look at Absurd Design. The main idea of the website is to give people a chance to think and spark their creative imagination and artistic vision. On the website, you will find doodles that might not make any sense. However, they are still capable of adding great value to your designs.
The free download includes 11 black and white illustrations in PNG formats that you can use with credit. For access to colored versions, PNG and SVG formats, alongside not having to link back to them, you can sign up to their membership plan. This will cost you $57 per quarter.
14. Vecteezy
Vecteezy has been on the web for quite some time now. The tool makes it easy to explore thousands of free illustrations created by vector artists from all over the globe. It has recently added a new feature to the site that lets you modify designs before downloading them.
On Vecteezy, you can also comment on vectors and give design critique – perfect for vector designers who want free feedback, or for designers who want to practice a bit of digital mentorship.
Over to you!
While stock photos might come in handy sometimes, there’s nothing quite like a custom illustration to add style and personality to your homepage, landing page, infographic, or any web page your visitors land on.
With these resource sites and freebies, you can find illustrations in a variety of styles for free and use them to add a modern and trendy touch to your design projects.
Now, instead of settling for heavily pixelated graphics and stock photos used on hundreds of other websites, take a look at what the sites above have to offer. Finding the right graphic or design can sometimes be a long and stressful process, but these sites are making the work easier for the rest of us.
And now… we’ve reached the end of our roundup of 14 websites for downloading free illustrations. Each website comes with a different type of vector art, so you can take your pick, depending on the type of project you’re working on!
Next time you’re looking for some ready-made graphics, head to our recommended sites to make your project stand out.
All the best!
Further reads:
20+ Awesome Free Block Letter Fonts You Must Explore!
Top 8 (Free and Paid) Watermark Apps for Android & iPhone
Identify and Find Font from an Image with these Tools!
Top 6 Free Image Hosting Websites
5 Killer Graphic Design Tips That Will Boost Your Customer Engagement
