ansdell.net images, artwork, some text, online design tools, fonts and icons

There is a separate article with some considerations on licences and risks.

Images and artwork

To provide additional material, inspiration, supporting graphics and artwork for publications which I edit (both web and print). I prefer, and mostly use, websites that offer a simple Royalty-Free or free licence and are free or low cost. I have listed below most of the sites that I use. The order reflects the frequency that I use the sites which, in turn, gives an idea of the combination of how often I find what I need there, ease of use, and cost.

• openclipart.org SVG and PNG clipart, most with a CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication
• ParishPump has UK-based editorial material for church magazines. Includes some nice cartoons, black and white artwork and monthly coloured cover illustrations. Annual subscription.
• Yvon Prehn’s Effective Church Communications site discusses and provides ideas for print and online church publications. From the theology of Christian communications to examples of publications from lots of (USA) churches. The material is available without charge. A sister site, Church Communications Training>, also run by Yvon Prehn, provides training courses and access to other material. This site has a membership model for full access. Several books and booklets are available as PDFs; they are free to members and available to for others to purchase.
• kaboompics is a one-woman site with over 8,000 free images for lifestyle and interior design. Includes search engine and colour palette.
• Bible Picture Gallery provides part of the Christian Computer Art CD collection online. Lifetime membership for a small one-off payment. Does not have all the images from the CDs but a useful range of classic Bible illustrations and artwork. Web usage requires attribution and a link on the page.
• Freely photos has specifically Christian stock photography with a CC0 licence.
• Smithsomian Open Access has almost two million images of the Smithsonian’s images, licensed under CC0.
• DLTK’s Crafts for Kids features printable children’s crafts, colouring pages and activities for personal, non-commercial use
• Activity Village thousands of colouring pages, kids’ crafts, educational resources for personal, classroom, club and library use only
• Free Adobe stock resources.
• Sparklebox has free UK-based primary education resources.
• Google Images indexes lots of material but rights for an image can be tricky to ascertain. First search for the desired keywords. On the returned screen select ‘Images’ and then ‘Search Tools". A drop-down menu will appear and selecting ‘Usage Rights’ then offers several re-use levels that seem to correspond to the Creative Commons licence types.
• Creative Commons Search search for images, text, video, audio covered by a Creative Commons licence. This is the http link, the same location on the https server is for a search of the site's documents.
• Wikipedia encourages the sharing and re-use of its text and media. The licences, conditions and exceptions are specified in Wikimedia Foundation Terms_of_Use, section 7, Licensing of Content
• Unsplash, high-resolution photos licensed under CC0. They are uploaded by users and not verified by the site operators.
• FoodiesFeed high-resolution photos of food and drink.
• Flickr, somewhere to store one’s pictures. Some users make their photographs available under a Creative Commons licence (i.e. no charge but may have limited rights). Flickr’s Advanced Search facilitates searching for images licensed under several Creative Commons licensing variants. The quality is variable as there is no filtering of images but Flickr is a useful source of photos, especially of out-of-the-way places.
• Stencil provides a web app to create social media images from text and provided CC0 images. A variety of account levels are available, including free.
• Photo Pin searches Flickr and returns licensable content. It supports several criteria, simplifies downloading the correct size image and provides the necessary credit strings.
• PicFindr searches across several image sites for various license types (e.g. Creative Commons and GNU). In addition to the usual image sites it also looks at the free sections of some commercial image providers.
• Gratisography by Ryan McGuire provides a range of beautiful but also intriguing images released under a license similar to CC0 but with additional limitations. Tinyography is also by Ryan McGuire and provides square-format photos shot using an iPhone.
• Morguefile.com provides no-cost images for inspiration, reference and use in creative work, commercial or not. Each image has details of applicable licence conditions.
• Deviant Art is a site where artists display their work. Some is Creative Commons licensed and there is a specific CC group at http://creative-commons.deviantart.com/ but no facility to search by licence on the site. Try searching on Google images with the string as suggested above and add ‘site:deviantart.com’.
• Depositphotos, stock photography and artwork, new credits expire after a year, so keep a careful check on when you bought them.
  Depositphotos also provide Crello, a free online graphic editor.
• unDraw MIT-licensed SVG illustrations for every project you can imagine and create.
• Stockunlimited stock images and clipart. Subscription service but with occasional special offers.
• Magdeleine has images released under CC0 or CC BY-SA. Supports search, browse or browse by photographer. Offers light and dark versions of images.
• SplitShire.com has images that are free but with usage restrictions. Provides search and categories (including blur and grain backgrounds).
• clkre.com royalty-free svg and png images and photos
• Pixabay.com free images, illustrations, graphics and videos released under a Creative Commons CC0 licence. You can copy, modify, distribute and use the images, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission and without attribution. However, depicted content may still be protected by trademarks, publicity or privacy rights.
• re:splash by Daniel Nanescu. Free for personal and commercial use. Over 1100 large images. Site provides search and browse but no categories.
• picjumbo.com free contemporary photos. A premium service is available.
• Pexels. All photos on Pexels should be licensed under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licence.
• SplitShire free stock photos and images for commercial use. The site has search, categories and selected top pics.
• Free Bible Images, photographic or illustrated Bible stories.
• Freeimages.co.uk, over 13,500 free stock photos: require link or credit to use.
• Greetings Spring ecards by paid subscriptions.
• Imagebank, no charge for Christian worship and teaching events only.
• GoodFreePhotos has photos released into the public domain by the photographer but without any other releases hat may be needed.
• StockSnap.io images released under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 licence, the site has search and categories. Displays views, favourites and download counts.
• Burst, part of Shopify, is not just for online marketing.
• Lindisfarne Scriptorium PC Resources, artwork images, licensed by the volume and available as an online resource.
• EveryStockphoto searches several sites and offers useful advanced search options including licence type, image source, size and orientation.
• Realgraphy CC0 images, billed as non-stock, unedited photos
• FancyCrave free high-resolution photos from professional photographers. Two new images every day.
• Free Nature Stock royalty-free nature photos; updated daily.
• Visualhunt searches Flickr CC-licensed images.
• RightLight license-free photos, mainly of single objects or posed shots. An example is spring flowers with shots of a single flower or a small vase of flowers on a neutral background.
• Zoomyapps over 50,000 images with CC0 or PD licences.
• Dreamstime, stock photography and artwork, new credits expire after a year.
• Creative Marketplace showcases independent creators. Some works are just a few dollars. A page of six free items is updated each week.
• Freepik offers a free plan allowing use on a website with attribution or a paid plan with a wider range of images and more permissions.
• Shutterstock has over a quarter of a billion images.
• iStock, powerful indexing but expensive. Now owned by Getty Images. Getty Images itself has a huge but, for many purposes, expensive, range of content. However, their content may be available for free when content is embedded. Take a look at Getty Image’s embedding rules.
• Scripture Union LightLive provides an searchable index to Scripture Union materials with downloadable templates and illustrations. Requires registration, including full name and address, to access. The service closed at the end of 2019.

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Museums and galleries

The institutions below believe that some of their works are in the public domain and have provided images for use under various licences. Check carefully before using them.

• The British Library Flickr archive.
• Getty Museum Open Content.
• The Los Angeles County Museum of Art unrestricted images.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access program.
• NASA images, but check licensing carefully.
• The National Gallery of Art.
• NOAA photo library.
• The New York Public Library public domain works.
• The Rijks Museum designates most of its works out of copyright.
• US Department of Agriculture.
• US Library of Congress free-to-use works.
• US National Archive Flickr archive.
• The Walters Art Museum.

Online design services

• Canva design tool. Free tool and resources with additional chargeable items and services, including stock images. Yvon Prehn contrasts and compares Snappa with Canva and PicMonkey.
• Snappa creates infographics and images for blogs and social media. It features precise imaging sizing, templates, over half a million hi-res stock photos, easy addition of text and graphics, and re-sizing options. Three account levels including a free level that gives access to all the resources but only allows five downloads a month. Yvon Prehn contrasts and compares Snappa with Canva and PicMonkey.
• PicMonkey photo editor, templates and design aids. A free trial is available. Yvon Prehn contrasts and compares Snappa with Canva and PicMonkey.

Fonts and Typefaces

• Aleo by Alessio Laiso, a slab serif font in six weights with extensive diacritics.
• Anatomy of a typeface on Typedia.
• exljbris, the library of Jos Buivenga (LJB), offers several no-cost fonts.
• Fontshop regularly provide good quality no-cost fonts.
• Free font alternatives.
• Free Typography resources list maintained by Shakti Sotomayor at InVision.
• Google Fonts offers over 700 web-optimised, open source fonts (e.g. released under the SIL Open Font License). Among the fonts are Adobe’s Source Sans Pro designed by Paul D Hunt, Ebin Sorkin’s Merriweather serif and sans serif, Inconsolatas monospace by Raph Levien, Roboto grotesque-style by Christian Robertson and released under the Apache License version 2.0.
  Fonts can be self-hosted or served for free from Google font servers via a straightforward API.
• Hack from sourcefoundry, a source code font, based on Hack by Chris Simpkins with Vera and Bitstream.
• Iosveka is a source code font with variants that can be built from source.
• IBM Plex font has its source on source available on Github.
• Khaled Hosny has several fonts designed for TeX typesetting including:
  • Libertinus font family extends Linux Libertine and Linux Biolinium. Adds Libertinus Math, an Open Type Font with a MATH table.
  • XITS OpenType implementation of STIX fonts with math support.
• Lost Type Co-op a Pay-What-You-Want type foundry.
• Mononoki, a programming typeface by Matthias Tellen.
• Programming fonts article by Eric L Barnes, discusses popular fonts including Fira Code, Hack, Source Code Pro and Inconsolata.
• programming fonts article by Katerina Sand demonstrates and gives the origin and designer details for ten fonts: Inconsolata, Fira Mono, Source Code Pro, Anonymous Pro, M+ 1M, Hack, DejaVu Sans Mono, Droid Sans Mono, Ubuntu Mono, and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono.
• Newsletter fonts are considered in an item by Jacci Howard Bear.
• Spectral is a serif font released by Google, designed by Production Type of Paris, for long-form web reading.
• The League of Movable Type part of the Open-Source Type Movement.
• Times Newer Roman is a revised Times New Roman with revised letter sizes, kerning and punctuation. Released under the GPL.

Icons

The font icons used on the site are from:

• Font Awesome by Dave Gandy from Fort Awesome, published under the SIL OFL 1.1 licence. Fort Awesome is on GitHub, including the Font Awesome 5 development private repository, accessible to supporters of their 2016 Kickstarter. Font Awesome includes accessibility recommendations.
• iconapp.io from appcepted.io.

Other icons

• Google material design icons, over 600 open source icons available as SVG, PNGs and an icon font.
• Simple Icons has SVG icons for popular brands including leading software projects. It also gives the hex colour code used for the icon. The project is a GitHub project: the set can be downloaded and PRs raised for additions.

Subsetting

Subsetting a font, where allowed by its licence, makes a new font file consisting of a selection of glyphs from the original. When compressed it should be much smaller than the original font. The icon font used on this site was subsetted using the online service at fontello.com.

Considerations on permissions

There is a separate article with some considerations on licences and risks.