Open Designs was founded in December 2006 as a community of web designers and enthusiasts dedicated to sharing free open source web designs online. The aim was to bring together the very best web designers on the web and share those designs so that others may benefit and start their own web projects quickly and easily.
Over the years, The Open Designs Community (TODC) grew into a very active and loyal following, with a popular forum for designers to share and interact with other likeminded folks. Thousands of talented designers have shared their works on this site and thousands more beginners have taken those designs and used them as inspiration to start their own projects with.
In the Summer 2012, Open Designs transitioned from a source of website templates to a web design blog focused on sharing the very best open source resources for web designers, developers and geeks alike. In addition to open source web templates, the blog now covers all types of open source web resources, including WordPress themes, WordPress plugins, logos, icons, stock photos, photoshop brushes, fonts, web graphics, design frameworks, Javascript and Ajax libraries and more!
With thousands of resources available to designers and developers it can be very time consuming to find the right one for your current project. By curating these web resources for you, we aim to give you quick access to the best tools on the web and let you focus on the project itself.
Just like our web templates, each resource we publish will be categorized by license so you know quickly whether it is Creative Commons, BSD, GPL, LPGL, MIT or Licence Free. This extra feature lets you choose the right resource for your project and avoids issues later.
The Open Designs Template Gallery
When Open Designs first launched, it quickly became a hub for web designers and enthusiasts from around the world. Our community have provided thousands of XHTML and CSS templates for download and new members join to share their designs every day.
Templates submitted to OD have been featured on the very best design blogs on the web, including Smashing Magazine, Hongkiat, Mashable and 1st Web Designer.
If you’re looking for help on submitting a template, using them or want to check out our FAQ’s, a good starting place would be our Help section.
For designers who want to start submitting templates to the gallery, you can register here and use the Upload Design page once you’re logged in.
The Open Designs Newsletter
We publish a bi-monthly newsletter on the 1st and 14th of every month to keep you updated on the newest open source design resources, our best picks for newly submitted design templates and any special offers and promotions that we think will be suitable for our readers.
The newsletter is completely free and will make your freebie hunting a whole lot easier. You can use the form below to join our newsletter and never miss out on an awesome resource again!
Thanks so much to all of you who have supported Open Designs since the initial launch in 2006. With your help, we want to make OD the very best place on the web for designers and developers to get the best resources available, so you can spend time working on your development projects.
Updated: July 2012