As a project manager of a middle or small size company I often get some sidequests and have the opportunity to help out in other fields. Uploading content or searching for templates, pictures, inspiration gives some peace once in a while. Because of that, I have a scarce resource collection that is in the back of my brain. Sadly, that’s blank when I need it so mostly I use just unsplash and flaticon. As advanced projects ask for advanced searches, I collected them into one post. So next time I can find the sites instantly.
The main resources are stock photos, icons, patterns, typos, UI elements and some useful things for fun. For the sake of technical well-being, I list some SEO related tools too that I often use.
Stock photos
My most favorite when I need something special is flickr. Easy to use, nice pictures and the filtering is really cool. It’s like a second-hand shop. You can find diamonds and not so diamonds, but you can make some unique designs with those pictures.
Stockvault
Stockvault is a really interesting site. It’s kind of like flickr without the cool filtering. The bizarre part is that they show you the really cool shutterstock images above and under the free pictures that makes everything a little bit worse than it actually is. If you want something else than a quite stock looking pic, then you are at the right place.
Gratisography
If you want some crazy shots and lively colors then definitely check gratisography. If I want a cool campaign then this is the first one that I check.
Foodiesfeed
For food pics foodiesfeed is your site. Every time I go there I begin to search for restaurants and decide that I’ll cook again.
Morguefile
Morguefile is kind of like stockvault but the shutterstock thingy is on the left side. The site has many flaws and there you can find some really creepy pics but as we know everything depends on the project.
Isorepublic and Lifeofpix
Isorepublic and lifeofpix are like any other stockphoto site with a not so great but useful filter, some ads and stockpics. The specialty of these sites is the video section where you can download short videos of bubbles, coffee and many more.
Splitshire
I think splitshire has a special vibe, just try it out. It has some really stylish content.
Pixabay and Picjumbo
These two are the basic ones, if you check it out you’ll understand.
Icon
For this I use flaticon, but some days ago I found iconmonstr and it looks like it’s worth a shot. The icons on iconmonstr are black and white so they can be a great base or you can use it for a special design.
Pattern
I think the coolest concept is thepatternlibrary so definitely check it out and toptals patterns are worth a try too. The concept of both of them is really great. The first one is more like eye-candy but toptals has some cool function with the background visualization so I really recommend checking these sites from time to time.
Typo
The ultimate typo site is dafont but I’m really bad with choosing the right ones so I found two games on canva and typeconnection for some help. At canva you can choose one font and the site tells you the matching one based on other sites. On typeconnection you can play a dating game with fonts where you get a tour on how to match fonts.
If you have some time try them out and have some fun while learning.
Fontforge is to make those last characters that are not in the font or add some accent or dots. Just for real pros.
UI
Uimovement is a new exploration for me but it looks promising. I think I can get some nice solutions from this site to my next project.
For fun
I’m sure that there are better sites now for this than this but my favorite to collect an imagepalette stayed cssdrive so I recommend to try out this too.
And at the end my old buddy snaptouch. Yeah, you could use other tools and they are more precise but mostly this does the work and it’s fun.
The list is not complete and never will be but time to time I’ll update it.
