AD | The Top 10 Design Resources and Fonts for Bloggers

[This post is sponsored by Design Bundles]

There’s something about living through a pandemic that makes you want to change pretty much everything: from your life, to your home to… well, your blog.

In my case, I’m pretty obsessed with blog design even at the best of times: I have a Pinterest board devoted to the subject , and I’m probably spending more money on fonts right now than I am on anything else (Other than food, obviously.)

I really wish I was joking about this, but nope: working on my blog is one of the few things that distracts me from everything going on in the world right now, so I’ve been spending a lot of time on a bit of a blog facelift, which will (hopefully!) be unveiled soon. Until then, however, here are some of my favourite resources for fonts, graphics, and other design elements: and while I’ve been using these purely for blog design, if you’re homeschooling right now, or just getting into something like journaling or scrap-booking to help pass the time on lockdown, these will be useful for all of those purposes, too.

CANVA (Canva.com)

If you’re a fellow blogger, I’m sure Canva.com will need no introduction: it’s one of the most popular resources for graphic design, and is also home to a huge selection of stock photography. I mostly use Canva to create graphics for Pinterest (Like the one in this post, for instance…), but it also works for just about anything you might need graphics for, so you’ll find tons of free templates for logos, invitations, infographics, book covers – you name it.

The site is incredibly easy to use, even for someone like me, who likes things to look nice, but doesn’t have either the time or the skill to be able to do it all from scratch, and while the free version should be suitable for most bloggers, you can also upgrade to the paid version if you want to be able to do things like put together your own brand kit, or use certain photos and effects. I use this site so often that I consider the £10 monthly charge good value, but, as I said, the free version is also pretty good, and gives you access to tons of different designs.

ENVATO ELEMENTS (Elements.envato.com)

This one is a paid resource which Terry initially started using for his web design work, and which I quickly cottoned onto as a great source of fonts, graphics, and even things like WordPress themes, Lightroom presets, and everything else a blogger could need, basically. This even has video and audio clips which you can download and use in your videos (It’s where Terry sources a lot of the music and other elements used in Max’s You Tube videos …)

THE HUNGRY JPEG (TheHungryJpeg.com)

I’ve been focusing on blog design here, but The Hungry Jpeg also has a huge section dedicated to crafters, all handily divided up into different subjects, so you can find graphics and printables for whatever you need. For bloggers, meanwhile, there’s the usual selection of fonts, graphics, and other web design elements like social media templates and product mock-ups.

DESIGN BUNDLES (DesignBundles.net)

Since 2016, Design Bundles have managed to amass a customer base of over 1 million users – which I guess is a good indication of just how much choice you’ll find here. As the name suggests, the big attraction here is their curated bundles, which give you all of the graphics you need for a particular project in one “bundle” – and also at a steeply discounted price, too. For instance, their summer graphics bundle will cost you £15.26, compared to the £197.13 you’d pay if you bought each graphic separately: this makes it a great alternative to The Hungry Jpeg and other sites like it, but if you do want to just buy a single font or graphic, you can obviously do that too.

FREE DESIGN RESOURCES (FreeDesignResources.net)

As you’d no doubt expect from the name, this site focuses on free resources from creatives, and has a good selection of templates, allowing you to easily create things like logos and presentations, as well as social media graphics like Facebook covers, Instagram Stories, etc. There’s also a selection of fonts, graphic, and add-ons like Lightroom Presets and Photoshop actions so if, like me, you’re constantly frittering away money on yet another preset you’ll probably never use, you might want to check out these free versions first.

FONT BUNDLES (https://fontbundles.net)

A sister site to Design Bundles, this site is an absolute haven for font addicts, and, if you’re anything like me, you’re probably going to end up spending a fair bit of your time just scrolling through them all: don’t say I didn’t warn you. For me, Font Bundles is a better alternative to Free Design Resources for fonts, purely because you can actually try them out with your own text. As much as I like the name of my blog, it’s a strangely awkward one to write down (There are just too many angles in it, somehow…), and I find that a lot of fonts just don’t look right when I try to use them in a logo. So it’s absolutely essential for me to be able to try before I buy and, well, guess what I’ve been doing for the past twenty minutes now? Or, you know, longer…

CREATIVE MARKET (CreativeMarket.com)

If I’m not scrolling through Font Bundles, you’ll most likely find me over at CreativeMarket.com, endlessly browsing WordPress themes and other creative elements. This is another site I’ve spent far too much money on over the years, and that’s why I’m now banned from downloading any more WordPress themes. It’s an addiction, I’m telling you…

FONT SQUIRREL (FontSquirrel.com)

There are no squirrels here – well, not other than the one in the logo – sadly: they do, however, describe the site as “free font utopia”, so you won’t be remotely surprised to find that there ARE plenty of fonts: and all of them absolutely free. This resources is also home to the Font Identifier, so, if you’ve ever been looking at a website and have fallen for one of the fonts used on it, you can upload a screenshot of it here, to see if the squirrel can identify it. Please tell me I’m not the only one who regularly does stuff like this?

PICMONKEY (PicMonkey.com)

PicMonkey is probably best known as a photo editor, however you’ll also find a selection of social media templates to use, plus things like graphics and fonts to use on them. These days, the site is subscription only, but you can sign up for a free trial to decide whether you like it or not. (Fun fact: a few years ago, when PicMonkey was free to use, the site was almost entirely responsible for some of the terrible photo filters I used on my photos. You live and you learn. Well, sometimes you do…)

DAFONT (DaFont.com)

This is another site that font addicts will be very familiar with. The stripped-back design of this one makes it really easy to browse fonts and try them out, so if you have a love of typography, and a few hours to kill, this is the site for you.

*

This obviously isn’t an exhaustive list, but if you’re looking for easy ways to refresh your blog design, hopefully at least one of these sites will help you out!