10 Best Vector Websites to Download Flat Illustrations

There's a good reason why flat illustrations have been a popular design trend for so long. It looks neat and contemporary, is streamlined, and modern, and—possibly most importantly—delivers information quickly. The main goals of flat illustrations are to convey a clean, contemporary feeling and, most significantly, to give users freedom and space to concentrate on the design. Modern fonts, minimal shapes, and solid color fill contribute to a flat design's clarity.

This blog is meant to help you understand the psychology behind flat illustrations and how to incorporate this aesthetic element into your upcoming projects effectively. Because flat illustrations have been around for so long and don't seem to be going away any time soon, we bring some tips you won't want to miss.

What are Flat Illustrations?

Any illustration that is proudly two-dimensional is what flat illustrations are all about. Graphics in flat illustrations are not given any 3D effect by adding glare, shading, or highlights. Instead, flat illustrations favor a 2D approach to effectively convey information. Effective flat illustrations by their very nature subtle, and as a result, it frequently uses "invisible" design elements—decisions you make that the user won't notice. Despite being a component of the visual design, users only "feel" and interact with these aspects; they don't truly "see" them.

Overall, flat design is utilized frequently in online and mobile interfaces since it is strongly linked to a modern aesthetic. The flat design trend has even started to standardize in recent years; it is now established as an aesthetic need for blogs, digital portfolios, and websites equally. It is frequently used by brands in their logos. Brands have been decluttering and simplifying their logos over the past ten years. The Google logo and its transformation from a skeuomorphic design to a flat design over the years is the most prominent example of flat design.

If you get drawing skills, you can create flat illustrations as per your projects' requirements. Read some of the best ideas to create flat illustrations.

The Pros & Cons of Flat Illustrations

Pros of Flat Illustrations • Compatibility with Responsive Design • Flexible Framework • Precise and Readable Typography

Cons of Flat Illustrations • Lack of Originality • Overly Concerned with Trendy Aesthetics

Future of Flat Illustrations

1. Semi-Flat Design Emerges From Flat Design Semi-flat illustrations, commonly referred to as flat 2.0, are a flat design with a few more realistic elements, such as shadows, reintroduced. It's a compromise between flat and three-dimensional design that you can use if you enjoy the way flat design looks but can't bring yourself to get rid of all the decorative elements that give your photographs depth. The disadvantages of flat illustrations, such as having to limit the amount of information you can convey because you're constrained by your design and running the risk of users not understanding where to click or scroll because you couldn't make your cues for them obvious enough, can be overcome by using semi-flat design. The semi-flat design gives the picture more visual interest from a less practical standpoint. Although the traditional flat design is effective, the semi-flat design enables designers to get a comparable result without sacrificing all of the intricacies and unique details that give designs a distinctive flair or enable you to capitalize on trends like color transitions.
   

2. Material Design Material design is an illustration style created by Google that stresses grid-based layouts and includes "deliberate color choices, edge-to-edge graphics, large-scale writing, and intentional white space" for a bold, graphic appearance. It has many traits with an almost-flat illustration. The design technique, which seems like a throwback to skeuomorphism, takes a paper-inspired approach with "visual clues that are based in reality" and "familiar tactile qualities" to help consumers easily comprehend and navigate products. Consider how the navigation options are immediately obvious in this UI design from Tubik Studio thanks to the subtle hue and shadowing on the buttons. Material design is responsible for the paper-like stacking of surfaces to create a hierarchy and the huge script typeface in the background. Even though material design incorporates flat design concepts, its focus on light and shadow, motion, and other nuances shows how flat design can be modified to be more practical and adaptable.

10 Best Vector Websites to Download Flat Illustrations

Top 5 Stock Websites to Download Flat Illustrations

There are increasing numbers of sources where designers may find free vectors, stock photos, and other kinds of valuable materials. The quality you require, however, could not always be there in free goods. Or perhaps you can't use the free materials you discover for initiatives for profit. Additionally, you can waste more time looking for anything worthwhile when purchasing a premium resource would be a better choice. In light of this, we've put up a selection of the top stock websites for high-quality vectors. These websites all provide high-quality vector files for icons, graphics, and other types of files.

1. illustAC

illustAC is a royalty-free stock market containing millions of pictures, vectors, templates, silhouettes, and whatnot. Various expert designers contributed to providing these professional vector art and graphics files in the SVG, EPS, and AI file types. Raster images in high-quality PNG and JPEG formats can also be available on the platform in addition to vector formats. You can search for required vector pictures and illustrations by category and style using illustAC's powerful filters.

You can perform searches in addition to using keywords, such as by color, orientation, etc. Download the watermarked preview available for any selected file to see how a vector image will integrate into your design. The Standard and Extended licensing choices are available for the subscription and on-demand plans, which can be billed monthly or yearly. You may also obtain top-notch vectors without paying a subscription thanks to the many free files provided by the illustAC stock media portal.

What They Offer: illustAC is offering millions of free resources to everyone. You do not require any attribution to use these images and vectors in your work. They also offer a monthly subscription plan which cost the user 12$ per month and a yearly subscription plan comprising 11$ per month. You will get unlimited download options in return.

What They Do Not Allow: They do not allow bulk downloads, unlimited downloads, or folder downloads to free users. Also, you cannot use their illustrations as the main element in your commercial projects without an extra license.

2. Vecteezy

A wonderful place to find excellent vectors is Vecteezy. They provide millions of vectors, both premium and free.

What They Offer: They offer a pro subscription for 7 USD per month and a yearly subscription that will cost you 4.50USD per month. Free users can have limited access to all free resources and could download up to 10 free resources in a day. The pro users will get access to all free resources as well as the pro resources.

What They Do Not Allow: They do not allow to use their resources to sell or use commercially. After proper licensing, users can use the free resources in their projects by giving attribution to the site.

3. Freepik

Both free and paid resources are readily available on Freepik. You can utilize pictures and PSD files in your design projects in addition to vectors.

What They Offer: They are providing thousands of free images, vectors, videos, templates, and much more for their users around the globe. They also offer premium content that only premium users could use. Their subscription charges are 15 EUR* /month and 9 EUR* /month if you buy a yearly subscription.

What They Do Not Allow: They do not allow to use their resources commercially. Both free and premium users are prohibited to use their resources specifically logotypes to incorporate into your projects.

4. Envato Elements

Millions of artistic resources are available in the vast library provided by Envato Elements. You can find fonts, graphic templates, audio files, stock pictures, films, vectors, site templates, and more.

What They Offer: They are offering thousands of graphics, videos, templates, fonts, etc. Their subscription plans start from From $16.50/m.

What They Do Not Allow: They do not allow downloading anything for free.

5. VectorStock

On VectorStock you'll only discover vectors; no pictures or other resources. Vectors can be found in both free and paid forms.

What They Offer: Vectors can be found in both free and paid forms. You can pay for a one-time membership, purchase credits to use for downloads, or purchase a license for a specific resource. Here you can buy one single image for up to 15 USD or you can buy one of their subscription plans, starting from USD 49/month.

What They Do Not Allow: They do not allow their free user to use their resources commercially.

Top 5 Open Source Websites to Download Flat Illustrations

With an open-source license, you can reuse a picture without any restrictions and without giving the site owner any further credit or attribution. Furthermore, such a license permits you to use the photograph not just for personal purposes but also for commercial ones. Some free licenses only permit you to use the image for personal purposes (such as on social media), while others charge you if you want to use it on your company website or in an advertisement.

An open-source picture license, however, is not always clearly stated. To discover if there are any exceptions to the regulations, you should still review the license terms for each of the sites listed below. For instance, you might not be permitted to redistribute an image even if you are permitted to use it for commercial purposes without providing any attribution. For instance, you can be prohibited from creating your image site, sharing it there, and beginning to sell the image to third parties.

1. UnDraw

One of the best places for obtaining free source graphics that you may use without giving credit is unDraw. A fully open-source license allows for the downloading and uncredited commercial usage of photographs.

What They Offer: They offer everyone to edit the photographs before utilizing them.

What They Do Not Allow: The pictures from unDraw cannot, however, be used to make a website that resembles or competes with unDraw, nor may they be redistributed or sold. Additionally, you cannot develop integrations for it.

2. Illustrations. co

Illustrations. co goes above and beyond with its open-source license. In line with expectations, you are free to use the resources on your site without giving them credit, including for commercial endeavors.

What They Offer: You are also free to edit the images before utilizing them. The photographs can also be sold and redistributed on your website or app!

What They Do Not Allow: Illustrations. co doesn't have a very vast collection, but there is a little more variety in terms of style than on unDraw, even though they prefer to maintain a similar aesthetic.

3. DrawKit

DrawKit is another website that is worthwhile exploring.

What They Offer: On DrawKit, some images are paid for, while others are open-source and free. All of the free photographs on the website may be used for both commercial and nonprofit uses without restriction thanks to their open-source license.

What They Do Not Allow: The photos may be modified or used as-is under the terms of the license, but they may not be redistributed, sold, sold under a sublicense, or uploaded to free stock.

4. Mix kit

There is a sizable collection of open-source, free artwork available on Mix kit. They are acceptable for use in print advertisements, social media ads, and other forms of advertising.

What They Offer: You are free to use those images in both personal and commercial projects without giving them any credit. The open-source drawings can also be altered and sub-licensed under the terms of the Mix kit license.

What They Do Not Allow: You cannot use the Mixkit drawings, for instance, to create a website that is similar to Mix kit or to create adult content.

5. Public Domain Vectors

Free "clip art" illustrations can be found on many websites, however many of them only allow for noncommercial use. However, Public Domain Vectors is one website where you may discover graphics and videos that are in the public domain, meaning you can use them without paying anything.

What They Offer: Users that upload content to the website forfeit their copyrights in exchange for sharing it. In other words, the illustrations on Public Domain Vectors are open for distribution, usage, editing, and modification.

What They Do Not Allow: They do not restrict anything though they appreciate it when users link back to their resources.

Conclusion

These websites are making the work more accessible by offering creative possibilities and customization, which can often be a time-consuming and difficult procedure when looking for flat illustrations or designs. Additionally, you can tweak them to make sure they work for your project. You can download any design and quickly make it unique based on your graphic design talents. Visit our suggested websites the next time you need some ready-made graphics to make your project stand out!