The Rapid Elearning Blog

free vector images online

Do a search for “free vector images” and you’ll find hundreds of sites that boast tens of thousands of free images. The problem is many of them are junk and not even worth your time. Besides, how many free vector images do you really need?

Websites that Offer Free Vector Images

As you may know, many of the sites that offer “free” resources only allow them to be used for personal use. That won’t work for your courses and presentations. To make things simple, I reviewed dozens of websites that claim they offer free vector images and narrowed them down to just a few. My criteria for listing the sites below is that they really are free for commercial use. [updated 3/17/2023]

Some of the sites may require credit or attribution. That’s OK. Here are some tips on how to provide attribution in commercial projects when you use free vector images.

Other Sources for Free Vector Images

Another good source for free vector images is from artist community sites or a graphic artist’s own page. Here are a few additional places to locate some good quality, free vector images:

free vector images via dribbble

  • Dribbble: mostly professional quality images
  • Deviant Art: miscellaneous artist site; it’s a mixed bag but there are a lot of free images
  • Snap2Objects: images created by Mauricio Duque
  • E-Learning Heroes: whatever you find in the community you are free to use for your elearning projects and presentations.
  • PageResource: if you sport a mullet and watch Full House, then this site has the perfect free clip art for you.

Editing Free Vector Images

Most of the free vector images are going to be in .AI or .EPS format. If they’re .PNG or .JPG they’re not vectors. Editing the images requires an illustration application like Illustrator or Inkscape (free). However, you can edit most free vector images that are in .EPS format using PowerPoint.

edit free vector images in PowerPoint

Here’s a post that explains how to edit free vector images in PowerPoint and a tutorial video. Unless you’re comfortable with the illustration apps, I’d look for .EPS files first and use PowerPoint.

So there you go, a complete list of sites that provide free vector images that you can freely use in your presentations and elearning courses.

Events

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.

Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs

Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills

Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.

Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration.

Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help.



3 responses to “12 Websites for Free Vector Images Good for E-Learning”

June 23rd, 2015

Hey Tom,

Great post! Very helpful to design newbies like me. If a site offers free images for any use, and doesn’t mention anything about attribution (for example: e-Learning Heroes), does that mean that there is no attribution required at all?

June 29th, 2015

@Amy: most sites have some sort of licensing/copyright. For example, the E-learning Heroes community has a terms of use that permits commercial use and we don’t ask for attribution. If the site doesn’t ask for attribution and permits free use then you aren’t required to attribute the source. However, it is still good form to give props back to the source if possible.

Leggi la traduzione (autorizzata) in italiano di questo post qui: http://www.mosaicoelearning.it/blog/?p=3245