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Following the well-established design trend for favoring human experience, it’s the person-to-person connection, which results in more engaged audience interaction and higher impressions. In times of self-isolation and forced solitude, the urge for the human approach is stronger. The easiest way is to involve the vector characters — cartoonish target audience representations, guiding people through your resource, and turning it into a memorable journey.
Aiming for success you look up to the best of the best in the field: companies who are trusted for their impeccable service and who hitch on together with their community. Famous brands like Mailchimp, Etsy, Dropbox and Slack have developed the recognizable online presence, using character illustrations in different website areas. This attitude shows that these services were made by people and for people, implying a kinship existing in the service-using community.
There are dozens of ways you can prove the efficiency of vector characters for your online platform by turning to some paid character creators or free illustrations for websites. Just choose the style to your liking and start telling your story to the world!
Woosh: Vivid Library of Characters
Delivery, e-commerce, social, coding, 404, success, meeting, login — you name it! All the essential UI illustration pieces are included so your website won’t be left unguarded. There are 29 png elements available for free download (with a condition to leave a backlink as a thank-you). For only $29 you can gain access to all the resources, made in .ai, .sketch, .fig, and .eps formats with 2 color variations with all customization options.
IRA Design: Gradient Dimensions
Put hand-drawn characters into different settings, colored in gentle gradients! The kit is download-free, coming with 22 backgrounds, 30 premade scenes, 27 objects, and 19 characters in PNG and SVG formats. Responsive, retina-ready, and given away with MIT license — just go get it!
Blush: Tell your story with illustrations
Colorful, cheerful and just fun! You can try out various styles in a convenient edit tool (available as an online generator or Sketch/Figma plugins, choose what you prefer) and then download a character or a ready-made scene as the small PNG file. Have an eye for some graphics with a “pro” label on them? Try Blush Pro for free and maybe you’ll never want to downgrade your subscription. Dive into many ingenious collections by talented authors: scenes, avatars, elements, characters! If you’re an illustrator yourself, you can also join the platform along with other creators.
Absurd Design: Absurd Illustrations That Make Sense
Surreal paint brush-drawn images represent character illustrations to a lesser degree: there are all sorts of abstract creatures, objects and elements, and they’re multipurpose! Free access guarantees you the delivery of 11+4 free images in PNG format, while $57 membership is your way of getting brand new content regularly, receive it in colored and black&white versions with both PNG and SVG format.
Scale: New Open-Source Illustration Each Day
What plots are hidden behind these flat scenes? It’s up to you what story to tell with the illustration from the library. Male/female main character or both of them painted online with the color-picker, downloaded in SVG or PNG formats. The resource is available with very generous license terms you should check out as well!
ManyPixels: Illustration Gallery
The library of vector illustration art gets updated weekly so you can constantly boost your projects with royalty-free images. The new websites version offers a more convenient way of generating graphics for your digital projects! Choose the monochromatic, isometric, two-color or flat line style, adjust colors for your kit. Download the vector characters in SVG or PNG to let them get settled in your newsletter, website, landing page or app. Don’t forget to drop by their subscription plans, suiting those, who’re not ready for hiring the in-house designer.
Charco: All Distressed and Grungy
Reminding of the well-known Dropbox illustrations, this set of 16 free handcrafted doodles comes in handy for decorating categories like 404 error, no internet connection, no service, fatal error, page not found, something went wrong, under construction and many more. Deliver the essential web page messages in a funky, joyful manner!
Phonies: These Are Worth Meeting
Their name is ambiguous at first sight and might be even confusing. But as a matter of fact, we all are phonies — people, spending time with their phones wherever we go, whatever we do. Just like these 8 simple black and white illustrations resting, working, having a break, walking around. AI, SVG, PNG, and PDF formats would find their place in any design software. When you’re done with these dudes, go and say “hi” to Neighbour Larry, also available as a free set of 14 vector illustrations by Growwwkit.
DrawKit: Working From Home Illustrations
A new week means new hand-drawn UI illustrations sets and animation packs! There are some ready-made and mix&match collections you can get to use for absolutely anything. Tons of juicy SVG illustrations to rummage through are placed on the website to fit your requests: vote for the already existing variants or put a new order and who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky!
Steamline Lab: Experiment with 80 Free Illustrations
There are flat, geometrical and hand-drawn folks, demonstrating a myriad of activities and meanings. You can choose between 8 mini-sets in SVG format, absolutely free to download! They can fit your applications, websites, presentations and maybe fulfil some print-ready goals — it’s allowed to use them for any commercial or personal project.
Iconsout: Snipping Digital Paper Illustrations
Free digital 20 cutouts come with the feeling of something carefully hand-crafted! Including some of them in the interface of your future project will highlight the human approach, while making the design cozier. The illustrations are not editable, however, some scenes are different in the presence/absence of background objects and stand for the most essential UI/UX commands and notions. The neutral color palette will fit any context!
3D Bay: Compose New 3D Plots
The abundance of flat character illustrations fascinates, but the same can’t be usually said about their 3D equivalents. And it’s completely understandable: the process of delivering 3D models can be more time-consuming and technically complex (think of all the rendering process it takes). Thankfully, CloudDevs have created a free-of-charge collection, full of 3D stories from the office, home, city, airport, cafes, and other locations, telling about tons of relevant situations happening in our daily life, requiring some 3D equivalents. Browse through the given categories to flatter your designs by picking something colorful and cute!
All Humaaans Are Here
Humaaans is a mix-and-match library you can use to create characters and even scenes in a bold, vibrant style. Designed in Sketch and InVision Studio formats, it is free for personal and commercial (yay!) use. And you just can’t help enjoying the process as you make the first click. It literally devours your mind and thoughts!
Craftwork Design: Unruly Illustrations
If your website or app lacks some sort of a personal touch, mascot or engaging characters, you can turn to this set of vector illustrations! Trust them to tell the story of your company or brand. The set of 20 bright illustrations is carefully designed and is fully customizable for rendering any idea and bringing it home to everyone. They are available in EPS, SVG, PNG, Ai, Sketch and Figma — choose any convenient format you want.
Icons8: Ouch Free UX illustrations library
The interface illustrations from Ouch by Icons8 come free as PNG’s, and for the vectors, you should become their paid subscriber. It must be super helpful since you will be able to edit files to your liking and not to have to credit Icons8 if you don’t feel like. Choose the vector style or vector subject in order to navigate through the flow of high-quality graphics.
UnDraw: Open-Source Illustrations
Before scrolling through the presented characters, check out the on-the-fly color image generation to set the matching color for your branding identity. Then prepare yourself for digging deep down the huge free collection of characters, shown in the most common and essential settings, able to find their place in your project.
Darumo: Persona Portrait Creator
Not exactly the UX resources type of collection but it’s a nice library for creating personas with exact features you want them to have. The constructor features skin tones, face and eye shapes, mouths, hairstyles (plus bald), facial hair types, noses, outfits, glasses, earrings, necklaces and more. Such a rich choice of elements and possible combinations: just like The Sims for your UI/UX projects.
Open Peeps: Creations For All Occasions
Another gorgeous and free character creator by Pablo Stanley! Coming in default black and white colors, you can download this vast collection (making over 584,688 combinations possible) to mix and edit them in Sketch, Figma, XD, or Studio. Befriend these vector Peeps on your landing page, app or website.
Kavoon: Gentleman Character Generator
With lots of features included (eyes, clothing, hair & beards) it can re-create the required image in a few clicks and deliberate your project from dull graphics. Awesome for app designs, newsletters, and landing pages, these free vector illustrations for websites come in AI, PNG, SVG formats. Even if they eventually don’t fit your project, you can save this kit for creating nice avatars or personal birthday cards for friends!
Getillustrations: Ghost Vector Illustrations
Minimalistic characters and scenes built from clean strokes and solid spaces. Perfect illustrations pack to use for apps, websites, and printed material…you call it! There are 80 characters, 55 elements, and 20 ready-made scenes. Ghost illustrations are designed with the purpose of giving designers the ability to create more and play around with the illustrations, all character bodies, arms, and heads — they are interchangeable, coming in almost all file formats!
Getillustrations: Creative Web and App Illustrations
The authors of the previous freebie have a huge base of hand-drawn collections of UI illustrations. You can start with 13 free cute cat stickers and then be convinced to get more in a paid section. There are 3D, hand-drawn, isometric and surreal bundles of goods, worth admiring.
Open Doodles: Free Sets of Vector Illustrations
Inky characters, dancing, flying around, and just enjoying themselves. There’s something so familiar about them… of course, they’re soaked in the spirit of Pablo Stanley, who created them, embracing the idea of Open Design. “I hope that this kind of resource makes it easier for designers to show the value of illustration in their mockups. Or perhaps this will encourage others to create their own kit and share it with the world”, says Pablo. Indeed, you see how awesome these vector characters look on a landing page and no doubts are left.
Pay For Layers: Free PNG Illustrations
There are 8 free illustrations for websites, apps, landings, given away for free. But the project’s name is there for a reason: if you need a layered version of every single doodle, toss some coin! You can go with $3 per illustration or get the whole pack for $15. Such a rare and unique find. And the rules are simple: can download, can’t resell as yours!
Stubborn Generator: For Free Easy-Going Design
Another character creator by Craftwork Design for illustrating the core ideas of your project with an eye-pleasing drawing style. The free-version pack provides you with fully vector elements to use as a human constructor: 3 persons, 10 boys and 10 girls Illustrations, 5 robot Illustrations, and 20 scenes to place them into. If you look at the very bottom of the page, you’ll find bonus projects by the same team with rare demo assets to use for free as well.
People Kit by Darumo: Create Your Own Crew
Walking, chatting, and having fun people transfer joy and the cheerful mood of their little drawn world! Invite them to your projects from these illustrations to bring some life to them. The collection with 49 png files characters, and 25 additional objects (trees, park objects, office supplies, party decorations). Tell your stories and decide the faith of your characters. They’re available with a paid subscription $10 for monthly access or you can go yearly plan, which is on sale right now, by the way!
Pixelbuddha Plus Membership
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Smash Illustrations: Illustration Constructor With Colorful Characters
The best UX resources from the professionals: character creator in a trendy style with tons of free elements to download. 250+ objects and characters with 20+ unique scenes — sure you’ll use every single element? Make sure you have Sketch or Figma installed, then go and get these beauties!
Fresh Folk: Illustrations of People and Objects
Thanks to this character creator I’ve discovered the mesmerizing works of Leni Kauffman. Her illustrations are so absorptive with their light summer mood from some beamingly alive cartoonish world! So imagine the energy your website would share with her library of characters and objects. Just enter your email address to let it be delivered to you.
SketchValley: Where Illustrations Roam
More vector characters in flat style! This fresh mini-collection of hand-drawn people comes in PNG, SVG, or AI file format to choose from at a great price of zero dollars. Working, having fun, traveling, dancing, and helping each other, they look simple and cozy, which increases the chances to get them included in your next project.
