Clip Art and Arrows, Buttons, Animated GIFs, etc...
November 15, 1999
Many 'free graphics' sites offer what is called 'clip-art' -
icons, buttons, rules, gizmos, and simple pictures (usually
GIF). They may help to 'spruce up' a site somewhat,
though novices tend to go overboard and put too many of these
images on their pages, often with little or no coordination
such as style or color.
I've classified these resources according to what they
seemed to me to be most concerned with, but please note that
many of them are broader in scope and may well be worth
checking out for other types of graphics.
Animated GIFs
Another common mistake is to put lots of irritating
animations on the page.
Note that they also take longer to load.
Animations may look cool and cute the first time you see them,
but you'll do your visitors a favor if you restrain the urge
to use lots...
The Animation Factory
has 12,000 Original Animations for use on web pages and in
e-mail. All graphics have been 3D rendered and are completely
original.
When you've selected an image,
you can modify it in GIFworks - which appears to
be a Java applet that works like a simple paint program.
The Animation Library
has over 3500 excellent free animations for you to use on
your website, plus articles, reviews, tutorials,
and everything else related to animated graphics.
A large graphic resource,
WebDeveloper.com's Animation Archive
provides a large archive of Animated GIFs for websites to use.
Clip Art, Icons, etc.
The A-1 Icon Archive
is a site with access to over 300,000 free clipart images
such as animated gifs, icons, backgrounds, bullets, clip art,
and pictures;
all free for you to download.
ArtToday.com
Their free membership option offers 40,000 Web-Graphics
including approximately 20,000 animated GIFs, 1500 bullets,
2750 backgrounds, 2750 buttons, 3500 themed images,
1500 rules and dividers and 8000 icons.
The Absolute Web Graphics Archive
claims to be one of the largest collections of free web
graphics on the internet with over 10000 arrows, lines,
bullets, buttons, balls, clipart and icons for use in web
pages or desktop publishing.
Barry's Clip Art Server
is an Award Winning, free resource for all types of clip art.
New images added daily.
CoolArchive
is a huge free vault of 1000+ clipart images, 950+ fonts,
4000+ icons, hundreds of animations, buttons, bullets, arrows,
bars, html and Photoshop tips, sounds.
Plus an online Logo Generator and Button Maker to create your
own graphics.
Designed to a T
has free clipart, backgrounds, dividers, bullets and animated
gifs.
Unlike most of the other sites,
there aren't zillions of images - but what they have
is very distinctive.
Iconographics Design
(formerly The Rocket Shop) creates high quality graphic and
information design, and distributes many Web images for free.
You'll find hundreds of unique graphics, completely free for
download.
MediaBuilder's
images are Public Domain, so feel free to take as many as you
need and use them in any way you wish.
Moyra's Web Jewels
is a treasure trove of thousands of truly unique and
professionally created linkware graphics gems for personal
sites, well organized by theme and updated with exquisite
new images weekly.
Noetic Art
has a small but high-quality collection of original images.
The FAQ
is worth the visit alone...
Webweaver XXI Century HTML
offers free backgrounds, buttons, coordinated page sets,
horizontal dividing lines, and
wallpaper.
Some Reasons to Not Use the Web...
How To Build a Web Site with Free Stuff Table of Contents
Image Search Engines
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