Struggling to come up with creative ideas for t-shirt designs? Are you falling flat when it comes to inspired marketing of your designs or your t-shirt printing business? It’s a competitive world and the well of inspiration can run dry and we’re here to fill it with a list of free resources a> for t-shirt printers and artists. Always check for licenses and terms of use for each resource if you’re using it for commercial purposes.
Design Cuts– This site offers freebies for all types of design projects so you’ll need to sift through to find assets that will work for your projects. You can find things like textures and patterns, vector elements, brushes for Photoshop, and graphics.
Creative Market– Offering a wide variety of designer resources including lots of free fonts and graphics, the freebies section should be checked weekly as they only release a few free goods each week. Additional free goods can be unlocked with small purchases.
Spoon Graphics– Created by Chris Spooner, this blog offers a ton of really excellent tutorials, videos, and of course free graphics and assets for designers. For a small monthly fee, you can access premium content to take your t-shirt designing and marketing to the next level. If you want to learn how to pull off a new effect, his how-to section is out of this world. We love this guy!
EnvatoElements– Most of the offerings from this site are subscription based but they do offer a limited number of free designer elements each month so subscribing to their email list is a great idea for inspiration. The site caters to a wide variety of designer needs including web development so there’s no guarantee that the monthly freebies will be of value to t-shirt designers.
Graphic Burger– This site offers a lot of high quality mockup solutions for marketing your designs as well as fonts and graphics available for commercial use. Most offerings consist of PSD files created by the owner and submitted resources from creatives around the world. Premium products are available for a fee if you see something that catches your eye.
TheHungryJpeg– Be sure to check this site every Wednesday for the freebie of the week which comes with a commercial license for designers. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. They also offer $1 deals which are practically free.
Sellfly– This site is actually a service that allows digital designers to sell their digital goods like fonts, website templates, and more but they have a section where the same designers can provide freebies in exchange for exposure on the site. We’ve found a few true gems in this list for both t-shirt design and marketing.
Shutterpulse – Offering free Photoshop Actions, this site is great for really dressing up your photo shoots of products and designs.
Dreambundles – Download their free font bundle for edgy and very useful fonts to use in designs and marketing.
Creative Booster – This site offers a treasure trove of design elements like fonts, graphics, and templates. And of course with this many designers offerings congregated on one site, you’re going to get a healthy dose of inspiration.
DesignBundles – You will find limited time availability of design features on this site so check back often to snag resources like SVG’s, vectors, and illustrations.
Pixelo – This site offers bundled elements for sale to creatives that are handpicked for their subscribers but they do have a limited selection of free items.
Open Clip Art – If you’re in a pinch for a design element or you just want a base piece to build on, you just might find what you’re looking for here. Downloads are available as SVG, PNG, and PDF.
FreeDesignResources – The name says it all here. You’ll find almost limitless assets to assist in your t-shirt designing and marketing of your business including mockup templates of all kinds, fonts, elements and tons of inspiration.
DeviantArt – This is one of the oldest online communities of artists showing off their talents. In many cases assets are made open to public use with varying restrictions and licenses. Each member controls their own terms. Being quite old, some assets are listed as available but the links no longer work so you forewarned, it’s kind of like shopping at Goodwill. There’s a ton of great stuff but you really have to sift through to find it.
PixelBuddha – Great for mockups and marketing, the freebie category is not for mass reproduction. If you find something you love and want to include in an end product t-shirt design, you’ll need to contact the artist directly for licensing.
Pixabay – Known primarily for photography, an overlooked aspect to this site are freebie vectors perfect for enhancing your design ideas. Everything is released under Creative Commons license.
Tutorials and forums for learning the art of screen printing t-shirts is next on our list of resources. Here are communities and sites we recommend for education. If screen printing your own designs is not your business priority, of course we recommend our services as custom t-shirt printers with decades of experience under our belt.
Ryonet Blog – This company is actually a screen printing supply company but to market their products to screen printers they’ve developed an impressive resource in their blog and YouTube channel.
Catspit Productions LLC – This company offers an immense library of how to screen print articles and videos as well as screen printing supplies and machinery.
T-Shirt Forums – One of the oldest t-shirt printing forums on the web, this site is where you go when you have specific questions about a problem you’re encountering. Chances are someone has already asked the question in many different ways and been provided answers from expert screen printers.