Finding High Quality free files on the internet is every designers daily dilemma. Sometimes you don’t have the time to make your own swooshes, or seamless paisley background image. This is why we search, and from my experience, the search can be brutal. There is a lot of crap out there, and sifting through all of the 1990’s “clip art” makes me want to blow chunks sometimes. I have, however, found a way to bypass a lot of the “junk” and get right to the good stuff, relatively speaking. At the very least, call it a freebie search tip.

As you all probably know, adding the word “free” to a Google search can increase your crappy results exponentially. This sucks when all you want to find is a free button, badge, pattern, or anything else that you’re looking for. Nothing out of the ordinary, just quick and free. It doesn’t need to be this hard, and it shouldn’t be because there are plenty of sites out there willing to share free designs but don’t necessarily rank well on Google. This is where we take advantage of both Google, and the social media sites in order to get instant highly relevant results, and quick access to freebies. It’s like using every social bookmarking site at once. Here’s how it works. . .

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I’m starting a new series today: Random Free Vectors. I started this blog to share things that I like to design, without having to have a client that needs it. So, I’m going to start posting some random vector designs that I like making in my spare time/research. These are obviously going to be more on the decorative/artsy side instead of web design, but they might come in useful as background elements, patterns, etc. I think it’s wrong for these to just sit collecting dust on my hard drive. I’m hoping that some of you can find uses for this series of freebies.

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This is a small set of of Photoshop buttons I made for a site I was working on a while back. It’s not a huge set, but I thought they were some nice buttons, and wanted to share them. They have an “inset” style to them with a silky glass effect, and will work well on almost any background. If you download the PSD, you will notice that here is not a highlight, but a shadow that creates the effect. Don’t forget to check the effects on the layers to see exactly how they are made, if you want to customize. For those of you who see no need to customize these buttons, a PNG with a transparent background is included.

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After my “50 Free Vector Grunge Corners” post, I got a lot of responses asking how to make vector grunge. Well, I’m going to show you exactly how, and trust me, anyone can do it. It’s not as hard as you might think, thanks to InkScape (free).

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This is only the second seamless vector pattern I’ve made, so I’m going to keep posting them one at a time. If you aren’t an Illustrator user, you can easily take this pattern into Photoshop and make a brush out of it or use it as a pattern fill for a background. You might see this pattern pop up in some freebies soon, here on BittBox. I thought I would go ahead and release the pattern anyway.

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