9 Free Illustration Libraries and Websites

Illustration has a lot of purposes these days when it comes to design, including giving subtle realism to design work. Illustrations can depict a story through captivating digitized drawings, as well as enhance your message by giving it more personality.

Illustration has the power to give you a sense of originality, especially in terms of brand awareness - whether for your own personal portfolio, or as a brand promoting its products. This design style works for various platforms including website landing pages, mobile applications, templates, pamphlets, posters and more.

Of course, creating illustrations takes a lot of time which is why at times, it’s easier to use ready-made illustrations for your project. So, here are eight free illustration websites and libraries.

1. IconScout

Wondering where you can get free SVG or 3D illustrations? Yes, we know we’re tooting our own horn here, but if you’re looking for free design assets, IconScout has plenty of them. Get over 139,000 free and premium vector illustrations, and over 97,000 3D illustrations.

With IconScout’s design assets, you’ll enjoy these features:

• Access to many formats – Download any vector illustrations as SVG, PNG, EPS, AI or JPG, or download 3D illustrations as PNG, BLEND, GLTF, C4D, OBJ, PSD and FBX formats.
• Integration with tons of tools – Access these illustrations directly in design and editing tools like Figma, Adobe XD and more.
• Editable – Instantly customize illustrations to fit your brand and design aesthetic. Use the Color Editor to edit vector illustrations, or use the glTF 3D viewer to edit 3D illustrations…even if you don’t know anything about design!

2. Open Peeps

Open Peeps is a hand-drawn illustration library where you can mix and match elements to create different characters, known as “peeps”. It works like building blocks made of vector arms, legs, and emotions. You can combine clothing and hairstyles, while also changing the emotions of your character with different expressions.

Additionally, you can also choose to pose them differently such as making your character stand or sit.  You can use design tools such as Sketch, Figma, XD, or Studio to mix these components together - all you need to do is just download the library. You can also download ready-made peeps too.

3. lukaszadam

Made by Lukasz Adam, a designer, developer, and illustrator, this collection offers custom-made SVG illustrations. These free SVG illustrations can be used for commercial and personal use under the CC0 license (MIT license) where no attribution is required!

To access the library, you’ll need to download his free collection, and if you’d like to, you can pay for it at any amount you deem fair, or put $0 and you can get it all for free.

4. Free Vector

Free Vector is a free illustration website has many vector graphics including 3D, abstract, animal, symbols, vintage, wallpaper, lifestyle, maps, logos, office, shapes, people, and many more.

Like most free illustration libraries, if you are opting for free usage, you will need to make sure you provide attributions. Free Vector also allows you to modify, alter, remix and combine them with other files as long as you give credit to them.

5. Pixabay

Pixabay is more popularly known for their free and royalty-free stock images, but did you know that they have illustrations too? Just hover over “Explore” and choose “illustration” to access their library.

Most of their free illustrations are under the Pixabay License where it is free for commercial use and no attribution is required.

6. Themeisle

Themeisle offers illustrations that would work great for website landing pages, apps, and presentations.

You can use any illustrations for non-commercial and commercial purposes as Themeisle offers a non-exclusive worldwide copyright license. So, you can download, copy, modify, distribute and use these assets without attribution.

7. Undraw

Undraw is a popular free illustration website. The illustrations available on this site include categories such as education, business, love, home, news, etc. It mainly focuses on people and technology thus provides the perfect balance between art and tech! Also, it’s under an open source license so you can use these illustrations for free without any attributions. You can download these as SVG and PNG files.

8. Illustrations.co

Illustrations.co is a collection of a 100-day illustration creation challenge. Representing different categories of illustration, this collection includes varied subjects, from Marvel characters to office illustrations used in websites, apps and posters. These are super easy to customize and edit as per your wish and will! Downloads include AI, SVG, EPS, and PNG formats.

9. HubSpot

HubSpot’s free icon generator is easy to use and enables you to design custom icons for your website, app, and creative projects in minutes. Choose from an extensive collection of professionally crafted icons, covering various categories and styles, ensuring a perfect fit for any project.

Users can personalize icons easily according to their preferences, while the tool offers versatile formats for different use cases, including options to export and share the icons seamlessly. Functioning on a cloud-based system, it enables access from various locations at any time. Moreover, the library is regularly updated to incorporate new icons.

Take the first step towards a visually captivating brand presence by choosing from thousands of templates and customizing your logo’s color, size, and fonts on the icon editor. Save your creations with a click of a button and easily share them with your team or collaborators. When you’re done, download your unique icon in any of these formats: JPG, WebP, SVG, and PNG. Start your icon design and creation journey right now and explore what HubSpot has to offer.

Here are some ideas on how to use illustrations  

We hope you do browse through these illustrations libraries and incorporate them into your portfolio, or for your marketing and branding assets. To help you out, here are some ideas to consider on how to add use illustrations:

1. Infographics: Illustrations work great for infographics where you can take informative pieces such as an article, and turn it into snippets of illustrated information.
2. Social media posts: Using illustrations on social media platforms – like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn – is a great way to catch people’s eyes. Plus, it helps emphasize your messaging, especially marketing items such as tactical promotions.
3. Website landing pages: Spice up any website landing page with fun illustrations. It makes your brand look a bit more creative, compared to if you used the usual stock images. Having one hero illustration to tell your message adds originality to an otherwise boring page.
4. Pitch presentations: Making pitches to investors or your colleagues can be tricky, so why not catch their eye with illustrations for your talking points? It helps you emphasize your presentation and is aesthetically pleasing.

Looking for more design resources?

There are lots of free illustrations out there, but it can get tricky to find the right one to suit your design. And free design assets sometimes come with limitations – to use these assets, you may need to provide an attribution link, or limit your usage to personal use only.

With an IconScout All Access subscription, you won’t have to worry about running out of design resources again. While you can access tons of free design assets on IconScout, a subscription gives you access to the entire library of millions of vector icons, vector illustrations, 3D illustrations, and Lottie animations. So go ahead and give us a try – it will transform your design workflow.

This article was originally written on 25/11/2022 and has been updated on 18/09/2023.