The Best Free Stuff for Newbie Creatives
Not all freebies are created equally. No need to search further — here are the ones that shine
Not all freebies are created equally. Some free stuff is deceptive, they provide only part of the service, or worse still, you find out you need to pay up right before your final output otherwise you get a daunting watermark. Yet other free solutions can be valuable, they offer quality products via running ads to cover their costs.
When you are a new starter and not sure which tools or process to adopt, it helps to be able to take the time to try out different things to figure out your way. Even for a veteran, it wouldn’t hurt to save some money here and there, so you can spend it on items that truly matter to your creative journey and career.
I am going to talk about the free services in an order of a usual production procedure. Begin with finding the elements such as graphics, photos, video, and music then treating those materials.
These awesome freebies are readily accessible, have a clean interface, and nice user experience. I focused on web-based service, excluding mobile apps since I prefer to do my work on a bigger screen. I also avoid products that kind of give you the basic functions in a free version then save all the nice features/ items in the pro version. On top of these, please double-check the listed services’ licensing agreement although they are supposedly free to use.
Google Fonts and Material Icons
A huge library of both fonts and icons can be easily found under the roof of Google Fonts. When I say huge, I mean a catalog of 1052 free licensed font families available in 135 languages and a library of over 1,000 icons under 8 categories with 5 styles. The search function is helpful and you can download files straight up.
One very nice feature in Google Fonts is pairings, in which you can see how two sets of typefaces look when being put together. For Material Icons, some might think they are only suitable for the user interface setting. Nevertheless, with the visual representation of everyday objects and emotions like heart, thumbs up, phone and car, etc, I don’t think it is necessary to limit yourself!
OpenMoji
Speaking of icons, we all see the power of the emojis, way before this “ 😂 ” was being crowned by the Oxford Dictionary’s 2015 Word of the Year right?
OpenMoji is an open-source project that consists of 3,000 plus emojis in PNG and SVG format. It surpasses the other two open-source emoji contributors Twitter and Google when the ready-to-use criteria are taken into account.
OpenMoji allows you to find specific emojis and download them directly on their website. Compared with Twitter Twemoji and Google Noto Color Emoji distributing their whole set of emojis via Github, not supporting online lookup via keywords. However, if you insist those emojis at OpenMoji don’t suit your liking, as a committed creator, you can always perform a search at Emojipedia then grab that emoji under the Google/ Twitter section. Just make sure you didn’t end up using the additional proprietary emojis Emojipedia has offered.
Pexels, Unsplash and Pixabay
This trio is the most mentioned website for free imageries. Their search function is set up similarly, including orientation, color, and size filters to make it convenient to discover your match. Still, my favorite feature is the relevant tags system that brings up associated words to each subject. It’s good practice to search with a different but related word when the initial search results aren’t getting what you want. It’s straightforward to obtain your images on Pexels and Unsplash, you simply just click a button.
For Pixabay, you have to register as a member to make the download process smooth. That being the case, I am not saying one website is better than another since you don’t have to be “married” to one service. You can always utilize all the sites to find the image that you like the most.
One thing to take into consideration though is that Unsplash provides photos alone, Pexels’s library includes photos and videos, while Pixabay has photos, videos, illustrations, vector graphics, and music files.
Youtube Audio Library
The Audio Library under Youtube Creator studio is a place that offers more than 1000 royalty-free music and a few hundred sound effects. Back in 2013 when it was launched, Youtube’s official blog stated that it is alright to use those tracks for projects outside its platform.
To get to this library, log into your account, click YouTube Studio under your name and you will see the Audio Library at the left sidebar. Different filters are there to help you zero in your music/ sound effect choices. Hit the play icon to sample the track and download it as an MP3 file when that track meets your needs. If it is a song, you also have a choice to save it as a favorite by clicking the star button, so you can come back to it later.
Finally, make sure you give proper credit to the artist if that music track has a license’s attribution requirement.
Figma and Photopea
After we gather the materials, it’s time to play around with it. I would say Figma is a free alternative to Illustrator while Photopea is basically a Photoshop clone. The wonder of these two powerful tools is they run on web browsers. Whether you are using Figma to do graphic design work or Photopea to do photo edit, no installation is required.
Figma
After signing up for an account in Figma, you are instantly connected to tools like pencil, pen, and shape to do your work. You can also share your file and collaborate with someone if you feel like it.
My personal experience with Figma is on a small scale, like customizing my vector file and exporting it as PNG or SVG afterward. Yet many designers have used it to handle large-scale projects like prototyping and developing mobile apps, websites, user interfaces, and experiences.
The learning curve of Figma isn’t steep if you are familiar with the concept of a vector graphics editor. Besides, there are plenty of tutorials to guide you and a huge community that shares ample free templates and plugins to beef up your design.
Photopea
Merely go to the Photopea website and you are set to start your photo retouch or edit. Photopea is a savior for me since I have used it to carry out a lot of quick fixes for various projects. It supports the import and export of common graphic files such as JPEG, PNG, SVG, and PSD.
Photopea is proficient to take on advanced image transformation like applying filters, color correction, and layer masking. For the power users, Action Set can be created to automate a workflow. Let’s say you have to treat a bunch of photos in exactly the same way, having an Action saves you the time to go through the process repeatedly. You simply play the previously recorded Action and voilà, the revised images are ready.
Another gem is that since Photopea is an emulation of Photoshop, the Action files that are meant for Adobe Photoshop can be loaded in Photopea also.
Shotcut and Audacity
After generating still graphics at Figma and Photopea, we can compose these materials together and turn them into a video. This is where Shotcut and Audacity, a video and audio editing software respectively, comes into the picture. I have to be honest that I haven’t had a lot of experience using Shotcut and Audacity. Mainly because I mostly use other industry-standard software that’s being provided at the offices. Shotcut and Audacity are nonetheless the applications that are worthwhile to install.
Shotcut
As a seasoned video editor, I have worked with a bunch of editing software throughout my career. I would say Shotcut is a decent editing software with a relatively intuitive interface. They have a source/output monitor to check the footage, a timeline to edit your piece and some video/audio filters to add effects.
Compared to iMovie, which took me quite a while to read and watch the how-tos to finish an edit, I can complete a simple video without leaving the software to get help. That being said, I read some online reviews stating Shotcut is complicated for the average user. All I would say is, it might take you longer to master it but it can be rewarding too. The layout and setup are much alike with the rest of the popular professional video editors to me.
Once you get a hang of it, you can pick up other editing software with more ease. Shotcut website stores tutorials and faq that might be useful for newbies as well.
Audacity
Audacity is being used by podcasters, musicians, and other creative individuals to record, edit and mix sound. My audio enhancements are usually fulfilled within a video editing program, therefore I rarely fire up an audio editor.
My more intensive usage of Audacity is, at the time I was digitizing my cassette tape collections and it delivered what I wanted. I recommend downloading the FFmpeg library right after you install Audacity so you can import/export wider ranges of audio files for your project.
One thing to keep in mind when using Audacity is something called “destructive editing”. Once you made changes to the audio and saved your project, you can not restore that revision. For example, you are trimming your audio, save and close your project only after you are completely satisfied with the edits. Once you leave that project, you wouldn’t be able to un-trim your audio, what’s done is done.
Start Creating
The above list can go on and on, there must be other freeware that people think are the “better” options. However, I think it’s more important to start using the services, instead of fathoming whether Photopea or Gimp (another photo edit software) is more superior. Your time will be paid off more when you commit the hours to hone your skills rather than finding the best freebies.
Let me share with you an experiment brought up in James Clear’s Atomic Habit, it illustrated quantity matters more than quality when it comes to skills improvement.
A professor divided a class of photography students into two groups. The first group was evaluated by the amount of work they produced and the second by the caliber of a single piece of work they submitted. The professor found out at the end of the term that all the best photos were produced by the quantity group. These students developed their skills by taking hundreds of photos. Conversely, students from the other group spend most of their time thinking about how to shoot the perfect photo. Without actually going out and shooting the photos, they spend less time practicing and therefore produce mediocre work.
This article and all the freebies can be a stepping stone towards a prolific creative career. Once you practice as much as possible and don’t overthink your work, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
