The Best Online Vector Illustration Resources
June 4th, 2008 in Product Reviews
by: Matthew Griffin
It's not often that you find a web designer who's an amazing illustrator. It's generally the job of the web designer to take a lot of graphic details and form them into a cohesive unit. Still, web designers are often expected to do it all—it's just the nature of the job. That's why it's important to have a good list of resources for vector artwork to pull from when you need it. Well placed vector artwork can liven up a design and give it just the spark it needs to set it apart from the competition. Here are a few of the top sites for searching and downloading vector art.
1. iStockPhoto.com
iStockPhoto has grown tremendously in the last few years. It started as a user-contributed stock photo catalog and eventually grew to include video and vector artwork. Their selection is great and it's always growing because the iStockPhoto community is actually providing the artwork. Their prices are reasonable (though they've gone up recently). A full-size vector image costs $10. Not bad when you consider the quality of the work.
2. VectorStock.com
VectorStock is great because it specializes in vector images. Just like iStockPhoto, they get their images from a long list of independent artists. Anytime you're looking for icon sets, VectorStock is the place to start. Their list of icons sets seems endless. Also, they have a graduated price scale ranging from $1 for simple vector images to $10 for more complicated work. The search options on VectorStock could use some improvement; iStockPhoto definitely has them beat there. But overall VectorStock is a great site.
3. ShutterStock.com
ShutterStock is a lot like iStockPhoto in that it carries both stock photographs and stock illustrations. The size of their catalog easily competes with iStockPhoto and VectorStock but their pricing is based on a monthly subscription rather than a per-download scheme. Their subscriptions start at $249/mo. and go up. According to their sign-up page, $249/mo. gets you up to 25 downloads per day. That comes out to 750 downloads per month. If you're working for a large design company, ShutterStock could be pretty cost effective, but if you're an independent designer or work on a small team, iStockPhoto or VectorStock is the way to go.
I think this short list should give you a good place to start. Of course, there are other sites that provide similar services, but these three are way ahead of the pack.
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Comments
Posted By: Ville Väisänen on 06/04/08
Also check out http://coolvectors.com/ ! They're free and of great quality.
Posted By: Brad C on 06/04/08
Very cool, I've never heard of Vector Stock before. Thanks for the new resource.
Posted By: on 06/04/08
Ville, thanks for the link. Brad, glad to help.
Posted By: Joey Sichol on 06/04/08
What exactly is a "full-size vector image?" Isn't the whole point of vector images that they can be resized to whatever size you need?
Posted By: E. I. on 06/04/08
This may be unrelated but...I'll say it anyway... We need a site where we can download free photos and art - similar to iStock but completely free. No questions ask. No email notification required. Flickr and similar sharing sites still require you to let the author know. This has been sort of my goal. Free. Period. See our flickr page. Feel free to use the images anyway you want.
Posted By: Ville Väisänen on 06/06/08
E.I.: Try http://www.sxc.hu/ I think it's exactly what you're after. Most of the images are licenced with Creative Commons licence.
Posted By: on 06/09/08
Joey, I probably could have worded that better. By "full-size" I mean an illustration that fills up a whole page rather than an icon or something. While it's true that by nature vector images can be scaled infinitely, you probably would want a full-screen version of shopping cart icon.
Posted By: Nick on 06/27/08
<a href="http://www.vecteezy.com">Vecteezy</a> has some decent vectors for free as well. I would agree that for the price iStockphoto has the best quality of work so far, but only because they've been around longer. It should be interesting to see what Vectorstock's library looks like in the future.
Posted By: Srish Agrawal on 08/17/08
http://www.GraphicDesignTeam.com also has a HUGE collection of Stock Vector Illustrations.
Posted By: Free Vector on 05/26/09
Theres also http://www.freevectordownload.com A lot of cool vectors and all of them are free for personal and commercial use.