Resources & Tips
Get Inspiration and information on tools and other resources here
Inspiration
Get inspiration for your website
One of the best ways to get inspiration is to look at your competition. See what you like and what you don't. Go from there.
Strikingly Discover - on the Strikingly site, you can find loads of inspiration. These beautiful sites were all made with Strikingly. If you view the site while logged in, you can also identify the template being used (this is listed in the right hand corner after you click on view).
One Page Love - this website showcases a collection of one page websites. You can search by area (e.g., health, accountancy, author, etc)
Photos, Images & Video Stock
Free high quality photos, images & videos
Pixabay - has a great selection of High Quality images that you can use without attribution. They are all creative commons.
Unsplash - free high quality stock photos, beautiful images, free from copyright restrictions
FoodiesFeed - a great place to get beautiful, high-quality images of food for free!
Librestock - is a multisite search engine that scans stock photos from several free image websites, has many high quality images.
Stocksnap - free high quality stock photos, free from copyright restrictions.
Burst - this is Shopify's site of free high-quality stockphotos for websites or commercial use. Super photos here.
Pikwizard - free high quality stock photos which are free from copyright restrictions. Their 'most popular' section is nice to just get a look around.
Strikingly Library - within Strikingly's image library (in the editor) there are many free high quality images and videos
Logos & Icons
Create your own!
Squarespace logos made simple - get a very basic logo here. Perfect if your just starting off. Make sure to crop the squarespace branding at the bottom. You can do this with any image editor like BeFunky.
Hatchful by Shopify -simple and easy logo maker from Shopify.
Canva - they have lovely logo templates which you can customise and make your own. Change colours, fonts and even the icon. Whatever suits. You can create this with their free account here.
Icons8 - flat icons, any colour, no attribution required. Small icons free. Larger icons chargeable. A good resource to check out.
The Noun Project - search a million curated icons, customise to your desired colour. Download in black and white for free. No attribution required. Many are basic in design but very suitable for many sites.
Luckyicons - a Strikingly tool to help you customise your social icons. Make sure to get the hex code of the colour you want. You can do that with any colour picker (see below).
Fiverr - you can outsource your logo here. For only $5, you can get someone to make one for you. Check their portfolio first and see if you're happy with their style. Suitable, again, for when you're just starting out.
note: Pic Monkey has been removed from this list because it is no longer Free
Image Editors
Tools to help get the look you want
Use these (mostly free) tools to help edit your image:
Be Funky - image editor with some cool fonts
Canva - online graphics design tool
Let's Enhance - uses AI machine learning to enhance, upscale or restore quality to photos.
Deepart - turn your photos into art. Uses a machine algorithm to repaint your picture in the style of your favorite artist. Fun tool to check out.
Remove BG - easily remove backgrounds for free, currently only works for removing backgrounds with people. Clipping Magic - for a small fee, allows you to easily remove background of images.
I use Pic Monkey to mask text and objects too. See how to do this here. LunaPic also does this but not sure how good it is.
CoolBackgrounds - sometimes you just need a nice background. Use this tool to create and download. Get some brilliant backgrounds too.
RetouchMe - this is a super cool service. They do high quality image editing at a very look price. Quick turn around too. I've used it to remove objects in a photo and also to make someone slimmer. It's so much easier than spending time doing this yourself!
Colour Tools
Coordinate colours with these tools
You don't need anymore than two colours for your site when you start out plus a few neutral colours. These tools will get you going.
Colorzilla for Chrome - this chrome extension will help you match colours when editing.
Paint.Net - change image colours, remove backgrounds
Coolors - Find color schemes super fast, save them and the hex codes for easy access. One of my favourite tools! Colormind does something similar and also looks good.
Colorbook - great tool to give you usage guidelines for your chosen colour and also shows you how it will look on a website
Color-Hex - to get shades of your favourite colours
Color-Hexa - create a gradient between two colours
Picular.co -Google for colours. Search for themes using word descriptions of what feeling you want to create. Great for colour inspiration.
Color Palettes - great site to get colour inspiration for your site. Click on the colour you want (blue, green, red, yellow, etc...) and it will show you loads of colours palettes with a hi-res images depicting the mood for the theme.
