Asset roundups are usually affiliate-link farms. This is not that. This is what is genuinely in my project folders.
Fonts
Free, and good enough to ship: Google Fonts is not a compromise any more. Inter, Geist, Instrument Sans, Bricolage Grotesque and Space Grotesk carry an enormous amount of professional work.
Worth paying for: display faces. A distinctive headline font is the fastest way to make a piece not look like everyone else's. Pangram Pangram, Klim and Displaay are where I spend.
⚠️ Licensing is the trap. A font licensed for web is not licensed for broadcast, and "free for personal use" means a client cannot use it at all. Check before you design around it, not after the client falls in love with it.
Sound effects
This is the highest-leverage money in motion design. Sound is half the perceived quality and most designers spend nothing on it.
Free: Freesound.org, if you filter by CC0 and are willing to dig. BBC Sound Effects Archive for real-world recordings.
Paid, and worth it immediately: a good UI/whoosh/impact library. You will use the same fifteen files for years. The cost-per-use approaches zero within about a month.
Stock footage and textures
Free: Pexels and Mixkit are fine for backgrounds and overlays. Everyone has seen the popular clips, so treat them as texture, not as subject.
Paid: if a shot is the point of the piece, pay for it. If it is behind three layers of blur and a gradient, do not.
Project files and presets
This is the category where free is usually a waste of your time. Free presets are typically demo scenes built to look impressive in a preview and fall apart the moment you change a value.
What is actually useful is a working file from a real job — where the nulls are named, the expressions survive being retimed, and the comp structure is something you can learn from.
That is exactly why my resource shelf is set up the way it is: the files there came off paid projects, with the client's content swapped out.
Where free will cost you
Three categories, in order of how badly:
- Fonts with unclear licensing. A legal letter costs more than every font you have ever bought.
- Sound. Free SFX libraries are full of the same twelve sounds and clients hear it.
- Plugins that automate the tedious part. If a $50 plugin saves an hour a month, it paid for itself in month one.
The rule
Spend on the things that compound: sound, type, plugins, and files you will re-open. Do not spend on things you will use once.
Building it yourself and want a shortcut? Everything I use is here. Rather not build it at all? Send me the brief.