Resources
Be sure to check around for the terms of use before using any of these for more than just inspiration! Many of them allow fairly free usage, but not all, and some may have stricter policies than you expect.
Particularly specific resources have been labeled with their target audience, since specialized resources can either be useless for other use cases, or on the flipside can be the only ones appropriate for certain use cases. In general this page is aimed at being as medium-neutral as possible, though.
Colors
| oklch.fyi | Information about the oklch colorspace, along with a few tools related to it. |
| Wada Sanzo | A Dictionary of Color Combinations. | Digital recreation of a book of color palettes |
| Sessions.edu Color Palette Generator | |
| Coolors | Color palette generator |
| Adobe Colors | |
| Design Seeds | Blog with color palettes based on photos |
| Handprint - Watercolors | Color theory, mostly focused on watercolor painting |
| Color Palette Mayhem | A spreadsheet collecting color palettes and named colors from various sources |
| Paletton | Color palette generator |
| Color Designer | |
| Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours | Another digital book recreation |
| Colorhunt | palettes |
| Golden Paint Mixer | Simulates acryllic paint mixing using real paint colors. Only works in chrome-based browsers? |
| Traditional Colors of Japan | More a list of color names than anything |
| HTML Color Codes | Color picker that gives you all relevant formats for CSS |
| ColorSpace | Automatic palette based on single color |
| Two Color Combinations | List of hand-curated color combos |
| Image Color Picker | |
| Lospec's Palette List | Palettes intended for pixel art |
| Pro Color Harmonies | Weird palette creation toy |
| Colour Lovers | Also has seamless pattern generation tools |
| Palette Generator | |
| WebAIM Contrast Checker | |
| Who Can Use | Simulates various vision problems so you can get a better idea of how bad your color scheme is |
| Random a11y | Random colorscheme that meets minimum contrast recommendations. Some may still be difficult to look at. |
| Happy Hues | Color palettes with previews on a site template |
Fonts
| Font Squirrel | Aggregator |
| Velvetyne | Foundry |
| Velvetyne's Libre Friends | Page on the previous site highlighting other free type foundries |
| Fontspace | Aggregator |
| 1001 Fonts | Aggregator |
| Urban Fonts | Aggregator |
| Dafont | Aggregator |
| Variable Fonts | Aggregator, lets you try out the font's variable features |
| Google Fonts | Aggregator (You can download them, you don't have to embed them from google) |
| The Planet | Foundry |
| BV Fonts | Foundry |
| Fontasy | Aggregator |
| Fancy Fonts | Aggregator |
| Fontriver | Aggregator |
| Bit Fontmaker2 | Pixel font creator with a gallery. The gallery can be filtered by license. |
| Collletttivo | Foundry |
| Caveras | Foundry, focused on recreating game fonts |
| Disaster Fonts | Foundry |
| Act Select Replica Fonts | Foundry, focused on recreating fonts from media |
| Old School PC Fonts | Exactly as it says. |
| Iconian Fonts | Foundry |
| UNCUT | Aggregator |
| Font Library | Aggregator |
| Fontspring | Aggregator, has both paid and free |
| Fonts2u | Aggregator |
| Open Foundry | An aggregator, ironically |
| Some Free Fonts | Foundry |
| Font Freak | Aggregator |
Images
Patterns & Textures
| Pattern Ninja | Tiling pattern creation tool |
| Texture Town | VERY overwhelming to look at, but very cool; the patterns can be previewed on 3D models |
| Tilemancer | Tiling pattern generator aimed at retro-styled backgrounds for sites |
| Tiny Backgrounds | Warning: some are animated |
| Matt Horn's Assets | Free and cheap seamless textures. Some were included in some of the large charity bundles, so chances are you have some. |
| Transparent Textures | This sub-site uses a background from here! |
| Doodad.dev Pattern Generator | Seamless pattern generator. Check out their other tools, too! |
| Subtle Patterns | |
| Texture Ninja | has clipart style texture too, not just patterns |
| Texture Labs | |
| Salvaged.nu | Archived graphic design assets from old defunct blogs |
| Appendix Squared | |
| Share Textures | Textures and models |
| Hill House - Materials for you | Broad range of website assets beyond just backgrounds |
| Minty Oh's Scanned Papers | |
| Screentones | Screentones, texture brushes, etc. |
| Open Game Art | Game assets of every kind imaginable |
| Texture Station | |
| Background Tiles | |
| Bakground generator | Doesn't have anything resembling a name |
| Frugal Gamer | many different types of graphics |
| Stripe Generator | |
| Printable Paper | |
| Pattern Monster | |
| Tessisamess's Patterns Directory | Transparent tiled backgrounds |
| Pattern Cooler | |
| anniemation | |
| Textures.com | paid/free mix. Also has other 3D related content, like tutorials |
| Textures-2-go | |
| Subdimension Studios | |
| Realm Graphics | Includes other varieties of graphics as well |
| 3quarks Bakground Patterns | |
| The Fat Strawberry | |
| The Pattern Library |
Illustrations & Clipart
| Public Domain Image Archive | Curated archive of public domain images. maintained by The Public Domain Review |
| Open Clipart | |
| Visiwig | SVGs, a lot of it is paid but not all |
| The Noun Project | also has stock photos |
| Undraw | |
| Irasutoya | |
| Openmoji | |
| Public Domain Vectors | |
| Favicon.cc | Favicon creator and gallery |
| Divergent Rays's Linkware Archive | Properly sourced retro web graphics |
| Mazeguy's Smilies | Classic forum smilies, from the original artist |
| cursor.cc | Cursor designer and gallery |
| Clipart ETC | Primarily intended for educational use |
| Public Domain Vectors | |
| Webweaver |
Photos
| Getty Open Content Program | |
| Unsplash | |
| Wordpress Photo Directory | |
| Pixabay | |
| Openverse | |
| glorious LCDs | Macro photography of lcd screens |
| Line of Action | Reference photos for art |
| Animal Photo Art References Search | Lets you search by both species and head direction |
| Faestock | Mostly fantasy themed |
| Stocksnap | |
| Quickposes | Randomized images for gesture drawing and similar |
| Sketchdaily | Randomized images for gesture drawing and similar |
| Adorkastock | focused on dramatic poses |
| Nappy | |
| Pexels | |
| Wikimedia Commons | |
| Reference Angle | Similar to the animal reference search site, but for humans |
| Spillphoto Archive | |
| Muscle Plus | Buff shirtless guys doing goofy photoshoots |
| 3D sk | Intended as art reference |
| Deviantart | There's a Lot of stock photography on Deviantart. I was going to link individual accounts and then realized that it would more than triple the size of this already long list. Some account names I had down: themalenudestock, nighty-stock, artmatrix-stock, seductive-stock, guitarjohnny, theposearchives. |
| Free Images | |
| Animal Photo Reference Repository | |
| Pose Search | Search for poses by manipulating a skeleton |
| Picryl | Searches public domain images |
| Image After | Default ad blocker lists miss a lot on this site, but they seem non-malicious at least |
| Free Images | Seemingly unrelated to the other site of the same name? |
| Burning Well | |
| Pics 4 Learning | |
| Dreamstime | free/paid mix |
| The Pic Pac | Pay what you want |
| Shotstash | |
| Photo Everywhere | |
| Imagebase | |
| FOCA Stock | |
| My Stock Photos | |
| RGB Stock |
3D Models
| Makerworld | |
| Pose My Art | Intended for art reference |
| Figurosity | Intended for art reference |
| Magic Poser | Intended for art reference |
| Just Sketch Me | Intended for art reference |
| Design Doll | Intended for art reference |
| Thingiverse | Intended for 3D printing |
| Embody 3D | Medical focus, intended for 3D printing. |
| Posemaniacs | Intended for art reference. Also has photos. |
| NIH 3D | More medical models |
| Sketchfab | |
| Morphosource | |
| Poly Haven | |
| Mr. Furniture | Paid/free mix |
| Textures.com | paid/free mix. Also has other 3D related content, like tutorials |
Audio
Sound Effects
| GameAudioGDC | |
| Yellowstone Park Sound Library | |
| BBC Rewind Sound Effects Archive | |
| Sounds of the Forest | |
| FreakyFwoof Shorts |
Music
| Kevin Macleod | Also has printable graph paper |
| Bensound | |
| Josh Woodward | |
| King James | |
| Kongano | |
| Tim Beek | |
| Jason Shaw | |
| mobygratis | |
| Loyalty Freak Music | |
| Saga Musix | |
| NCS | |
| Sound Image | Music, textures, sound effects |
Soundfonts, Modules, Samples, etc.
| The Mod Archive | |
| Midkar |
Website Creation
Layouts and Styling
| CSS Generators | Various CSS effects, including pure CSS backgrounds |
| CSS Pattern Generator | More pure CSS patterns |
| Super Designer | Lots of tools for web design, many of which are for generating backgrounds using pure CSS or SVGs |
| Patternify | Base64-encoded pixel background maker. Comes with a few defaults to work off of |
| Webdesign Assistant | A bunch of CSS helpers and JS scripts, has a background generator that lets you play with transparent textures |
| CSS3 Patterns Gallery | CSS-only patterns |
| uiverse | Fancy pre-made styling. You'll want to click CSS whenever it gets unselected, you're unlikely to be using Tailwind |
| squidknees | |
| 1-line Layouts | A couple demonstrations of things that can be done very simply in modern CSS |
| Sadgrl's archived layouts | |
| Neothemes |
Scripts and Widgets
| Protected | Demonstration of a really clever way to make password protected pages. Uses javascript, but it's trivially obvious how to make a noscript version for visitors with JS disabled. |
| Freeframe.js Tutorial | Tutorial on how to implement a script that allows users to play and pause gifs |
| RSS Tutorial | Guide on adding an RSS feed to your site |
| Unsupported files on Neocities | Extremely cursed way to circumvent Neocities filetype restrictions |
| RSS 2 HTML |
Misc.
| Place Cats | Placeholder images of cats |
| Place Dog | Placeholder images of dogs |
| Lorem Ipsum | Lorem Ipsum generator with a large amount of options |
| Lorem Picsum | More varied placeholder images |