My Favorite Free Creative Resources for Front-End Developers

I think most would probably agree that googling things and tapping into developer communities is a key part of being an effective developer — regardless of whether you’ve been coding for 5 months, or 5 years. When you have millions of smart people sharing resources, it makes a lot of sense to learn from them whenever possible. Beyond just leveraging google, there are tons of free tools and services at the finger tips of developers nowadays. When it comes to front-end development, I wanted to share some resources that I use a lot to help expand my own creative boundaries.

Throughout my past few years learning front-end web development, I’ve definitely gained an appreciation for those giving back to the community — in fact it’s part of the inspiration behind this post. I’ve personally been able to build some things that I never would’ve been able to without the community. After all, I would say that many of today’s modern programming languages, tools, and patterns are a result of developers learning from what seems to work and what doesn’t, and then building from there. For example, I recently learned that python’s simple yet powerful syntax was actually heavily inspired by another programming language, called ABC. Alright alright without further ado here are some awesome creative resources that I’ve used quite a bit throughout my front-end web development journey.

Vectr | A Free Vector Graphics Software

What I use it for:

• resizing in inches or pixels, cropping, and converting images to svg or png
• creating custom designs, icons, characters, and logos

Vectr allows me to be create the perfect image for whatever I need, whether that’s creating a concept logo for a new idea, or simply changing the color of an svg icon. I’ve always used Vectr on the web, and I’ve enjoyed the intuitive web experience that Vectr provides. I also enjoy the fact that it allows me to make vector graphics without opening a desktop application that consumes resources on my laptop. With that being said, there are obvious benefits to using a desktop app, such as not needing internet to create things. With this in mind the Vectr team built a cross-platform desktop app that you can also use.