Mug's Graphic Design Bookmarks

Tools

This is a list of design tools I've collected over the years for graphic design, typography, and digital art. I use these resources for my own work and thought they might be useful to others as well.

Fonts:

• All of these foundries provide free fonts licensed for commercial use.
• The League of Moveable Type One of the first free, open-source web font foundries, small library but well-crafted.
• Collletttivo Open-source, collectively designed contemporary Italian typefaces.
• Google Fonts Free, open-source web font library, huge but hit-or-miss on quality, also hosts Material Symbols, a solid icon set.
• FontShare Curated free fonts from Indian Type Foundry, generally more polished than most free libraries.
• Velvetyne French, community-run foundry, leans experimental and multilingual.
• Bye Bye Binary French collective distributing inclusive, non-binary and post-binary typefaces.
• Open Source Publishing Brussels-based collective building libre fonts and tools, DIY and workshop-driven.

Raster:

• Mockups Design Free layered PSD mockups organized by category, packaging, business cards, apparel, outdoor signage, more realistic than generic template packs.
• Poly Haven Mainly for 3D work but they offer a wide range of textures that can be used for other purposes.
• Ambient CG Free CC0 PBR materials, more focused purely on textures than Poly Haven.
• Texture Labs A wide range of free, high-quality textures, leaning grunge, paper, and print-decay, photographic overlays rather than the PBR materials Poly Haven and Ambient CG use.
• Public Domain Image Archive Hand-picked collection of out-of-copyright works.
• NYPL Digital Collections Collection of items digitized from The New York Public Library's collections.
• Transparent Textures Free textures for your UI/UX works.

Color:

• Adobe Color Palette generator and library with direct Creative Cloud export, plus a large community-submitted library.
• Coolors Fast color palette generator, with a large library of user-submitted palettes.
• Color Hunt Curated collection of color palettes, with a focus on modern and trendy color combinations.
• Colormind AI palette generator trained on photography, film, and art datasets, lock in a color and it fills in the rest, or pull a palette straight from an uploaded image.
• Color Hex All-in-one color tool, shades, tints, RGB/CMYK percentages, and ready-to-copy CSS for backgrounds, text, borders, and shadows.
• Huemint Color palette generator with templates to visualize color combinations in real use-cases.

Inspiration:

• are.na Algorithm-free platform for curating and sharing ideas.
• Cosmos Visual moodboarding tool, built around a searchable image grid with a color-based search tool.
• Behance Adobe's portfolio platform, full project case studies across every design discipline.
• Pinterest The default moodboard tool, deep library but mid algorithm and ad-driven.
• Branding Styleguides Archive of real brand guideline documents pulled from actual companies.
• Fonts in Use Archive of typefaces spotted in real design work, searchable by font or by industry.
• Savee Minimalist, ad-free image curation, another alternative to Pinterest, similar to Cosmos.

Software:

• Raster :
• Krita Free, open-source raster editor, focused on digital painting and illustration.
• Photopea (Web-based) Photoshop alternative, opens PSD and other native formats.
• RawTherapee Free, open-source RAW photo processor.
• GIMP Free, open-source raster editor, similar to Photoshop.
• Aseprite Pixel-art editor (This is a prebuilt version of Aseprite for Microslop Windows; you can find the source code for Aseprite here and build it yourself for free, or you can buy a one-time paid key here to support the developer.)
• LibreSprite GPL-2.0 fork of Aseprite. Less advanced but excellent if you're looking for a more straightforward alternative.
• Snapseed (iOS link) (Mobile) Google's photo editing app, known for its powerful yet easy-to-use tools.
• Vector :
• FontForge Free, open-source editor for building or modifying typefaces at the point/curve level.
• Graphite (Web-based) Early-stage open-source vector editor, node-based and non-destructive.
• VectorPea (Web-based) Illustrator alternative from the same developer as Photopea, opens AI, SVG and PDF files.
• Inkscape Free, open-source vector editor, similar to Illustrator.
• Calligra Karbon Free, open-source vector editor, similar to Inkscape.
• Canva (Web-based) Simple and fast design tool with a vast library of templates and assets.
• Video/Animation :
• Kdenlive Free, open-source video editor, similar to Adobe Premiere.
• Blender 3D software at its core, but its node-based compositor and Grease Pencil tools make it a genuinely usable free alternative to After Effects for motion graphics.
• DaVinci Resolve Paid with a generous free tier, closed-source video editor, similar to Adobe Premiere.
• Glaxnimate Open-source vector animation tool built around the Lottie format, closer to a free After Effects plus Bodymovin workflow than to Adobe Animate.
• Other :
• Affinity (Requires a Canva account) Professional creative suite for design and photo editing, free alternative to Photoshop, Illustrator & InDesign, with Canva AI integration.
• Wordmark Types your text out across every font installed on your system at once, for quick comparison.
• PureRef Lightweight reference board, keeps pinned images on top of other windows.
• AnyGradient (Web-based) Universal gradient generator with OKLCH & Display-P3 support.
• LibreOffice Free, open-source office suite, alternative to Microsoft Office.
• Google Drive (Web-based) Slides, Docs, and Sheets are also nice alternatives to Microsoft Office.