Top Selling Graphic Design Assets: What Customers Want to Buy

Top Selling Graphic Design Assets: What Customers Want to Buy

Graphic designers have a wide range of products and assets they can create and sell, from fonts and templates to graphics packs and full branding kits. But what types of graphic design assets actually attract buyers and bring in sales? This in-depth guide covers the most popular and profitable graphic design products that customers love to purchase. Read on to discover what sells and get inspiration to create your own hot-selling graphics, fonts, templates and design bundles.

Bestselling Graphic Design Products to Offer

These are the graphic design products that sell extremely well across marketplaces like Creative Market, Etsy and independent shops:

Logo Templates

Pre-made templates that customers can customize with their own brand name and colors to easily create a logo. Very popular with entrepreneurs, bloggers, crafters and small businesses on a budget. Offer bundles with versions for different industries.

Business Card Templates

Templates pre-formatted with front and back designs that users can customize with their own text, images and brand colors. Include designs tailored to various professions. Compatible files for easy printing are essential.

Social Media Post Templates

Professionally designed templates for social posts, Instagram stories, YouTube banners, Facebook covers and more that users can customize. Different sizes for all major platforms. Very in demand from bloggers, social media managers and brands.

Presentation Templates

Pre-designed slide deck templates for programs like PowerPoint and Google Slides that just need content added. Big time saver for students, teachers, job seekers and anyone creating presentations. Include both basic and more creative options.

Brochure Templates

Layouts and templates for tri-fold, bi-fold, half fold and other brochure types that users can customize for their brand with colors, text and images. Popular for real estate agents, nonprofits, churches, events and more.

Flyer Templates

Attention-grabbing flyer layouts that can promote sales, events, offers and more. Offer templates tailored to different industries and design styles.

Menu Templates

Customizable restaurant menu templates with different styles like diner, cafe, bbq, seafood and more. Table tents and takeout menu templates also sell very well. Provide printable files.

Resume Templates

Professionally designed resume templates help job seekers stand out. Include templates for different industries like creative, business, teaching, medical, etc. Cover letters and references page templates are handy additions.

Graphic design products that save people time while allowing some creative customization are consistently top sellers. Keep this in mind as you develop products. Consider niches beyond this list that need great design templates too.

Bestselling Fonts and Typefaces

Well-designed fonts are hugely popular. These font types bring in steady passive income through licensing:

Display Fonts

Beautiful ornate fonts for attention-grabbing headings and typographic art. Script, serif, art deco, vintage and hand-drawn styles inspire buyers. Vector and high-quality png formats preferred.

Handwritten Fonts

Fonts that emulate handwriting with natural imperfection, variation and fluid stroke. Casual, formal, calligraphy and chalkboard style handwritten fonts appeal to many designers.

Decorative Fonts

Playful display fonts with characteristics like whimsical detailing, uneven baselines, textures and irregularities. Quirky decorative fonts stand out in displays.

Simple Clean Fonts

Legible, minimalist sans serif fonts useful for paragraphs of text. Avoid overly delicate and spindly letterforms. Neutral, modern, tech and geometric styles sell well.

Monogram Fonts

Alphabet fonts where each letter is a standalone monogram or ornament al font. Very on trend for brands to use as a set.

Doodle Fonts

Fonts with a hand-drawn doodle style that look like sketchbook writing. Often bouncy, loose and imperfect.

Retro and Vintage Fonts

Fonts with 1960s, 70s, 80s or classic vintage style. Can be display or paragraph fonts. Nostalgic stylespopular for branding, apparel, invitations, posters and more.

Cursive and Script Fonts

Flowing, expressive, organic scripts based on formal cursive handwriting. Sophisticated styles perfect for wedding brands, quotes, stationery, logos and feminine brands.

Sell individual fonts or package them into bundles around a theme like a monogram collection, hand-drawn bundle or retro font duo.

Top Selling Design Elements, Icons and Graphics

These graphic design assets provide popular creative building blocks:

Custom Illustrations

Unique vector illustrations like people characters, animals, scenes, objects and more. Styles like line art, artistic, cartoon, minimalist and isometric sell well. Useful for all types of design projects.

Patterns and Textures

Seamless repeating patterns, geometric designs, organic textures and backgrounds for papers, textiles, websites and more.

Washi Tape Graphics

Colorful washi tape patterns and strips in an array of designs. Used in planners, cards, scrapbooks, packaging and crafts.PNG and SVG formats.

Frames and Banners

Decorative frames, borders, photo templates, badges, ribbons, flourishes and banners designers use to embellish projects.

Modern Icons

Cleaned-lined flat, glyph and line style icons for websites, mobile UIs, infographics and more. Focus on popular subjects like technology, fitness, education, food and more.

Stickers

Die cut sticker graphics like planner stickers, laptop stickers, water bottle stickers, scrapbook stickers and more in a range of themes. PNG and SVG formats.

Ornamental Flourishes

Detailed decorative flourishes, corners, dividers, laurels, brackets and accents to embellish design projects. Vector format.

Hand Drawn Elements

Sketched illustrations, icons, arrows, badges, lettering, frames and dividers designers can incorporate into projects. Gives a natural handcrafted look.

Sell individual graphics or curate themed packs around occasions, holidays, seasons, hobbies and more. Watch trending topics to fuel new graphic pack ideas.

Top Selling Design Bundles and Kits

Bundles that provide complete ready-to-use design assets are hot sellers. Smart digital products to offer include:

Branding Bundles

A suite of matching professionally designed branding assets like logo, business card, letterhead, email signature, social media pack and more all coordinated in one brand style. Allows entrepreneurs to launch quickly with a consistent brand identity.

Social Media Templates Bundle

Dozens of customizable designs for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and more all in the same style. Huge time saver for social media managers.

Flyer Templates Kit

Dozens of themed, high-converting flyer templates for different business niches that combine to form a massive flyer template toolkit. Tremendous value.

Pitch Deck Templates

A set of professional pitch deck templates in PowerPoint, Keynote and Google Slides to choose from, saving hours of design work. A must-have for entrepreneurs seeking investors and funding.

Recipe Book Templates

Formatting and templates for cookbooks, menus, recipe cards, grocery lists and more. Allows self-publishers to make recipe books easily.

Nonprofit Media Kit Template

Templates for a polished nonprofit media kit complete with donor brochure, fact sheet, press release, newsletter templates, annual report designs, case for support and more. Everything a nonprofit needs to communicate their story and mission in one convenient bundle.

The key insight is that big collections of coordinating design assets create tremendous perceived value for buyers eager to save time. Curate irresistible kits that help them shortcut the design process in specific niches.

Trending Graphic Design Styles

Analyze top-selling design assets on Creative Market, Etsy, Design Bundles and independent shops. Note these current styles:

Line Art

Clean and minimalist line drawings use single thin lines to outline subjects. Creates modern sophisticated vibe.

Hand-Drawn

Imperfect hand-drawn illustrations and lettering look organic, casual and approachable. Very on trend right now.

Watercolor

Soft watercolor textures, backgrounds, illustrations and accents feel artistic yet fresh.

Modern Calligraphy

Sleek modern hand-lettering often combines thick and thin strokes. Looks chic and elegant.

Mid-Century Modern

Bold retro 1950s-60s inspired fonts, shapes and layouts. Playful atomic and space age vibe.

Isometric/3D Illustration

Flat 2 dimensional isometric and faux 3D perspective illustrations have a modern technical feel.

Glitch Effect

The distorted imperfect glitch effect applied to graphics, text and video feels futuristic.

Vintage

Nostalgic vintage themes like art deco, letterpress, ornamental signage, botanical and more remain popular for multiple uses.

Brights and Neons

Bold and intense brights and neon colors make designs pop against dark or black backgrounds. Eye-catching and vibrant.

Duotones

Use of only two colors, often complementary tones like orange and blue. Creates bold graphic impact.

Track hot styles like these to create relevant products, but also recognize long-term evergreen styling that never goes out of fashion. Both have their place.

Graphic Design Product Naming Tips

The right descriptive names boost visibility in searches. Include:

• Style like “Watercolor”, “Line Art”, “Hand-Drawn”
• Usage like “Social Media”, “Business Card”, “Logo”
• Themes like “Boho”, “Modern Farmhouse”
• Holidays like “Halloween”, “Christmas”
• Number of items like “50 Icons”, “20 Patterns”
• Benefits like “Time Saving”, “Easy Customizable”
• Bestselling keywords like “Bundle”, “Collection”, “Templates”

Good names quickly communicate what buyers will get. Research bestsellers in your niche to identify high-converting keywords to work into titles.

Ideal File Types and Formats

Deliver designs in formats customers want:

Vector Files

SVG and EPS files allow for scaling without quality loss. Essential for logos, illustrations, icons and fonts.

Transparent PNGs

PNGs work for any graphics with transparent backgrounds like stickers, elements, social posts. Ensure resolution above 300 dpi.

Printer-Ready PDFs

High resolution Print PDFs for templates buyers can print like business cards, menus, flyers. Use CMYK color.

Layered Files

For full customizability, offer layered files like PSD Photoshop files or AI Illustrator files that allow changing individual elements easily. Charge premium for these.

Web Font Files

Include OTF, TTF, WOFF and EOT files so customers can use your fonts easily on websites.

Office File Templates

For decks, workbooks and documents, provide PPTX, DOCX files for easy use in Office programs.

Delivering designs in the most useful and flexible formats makes products far more valuable and usable.

Promoting and Selling Your Design Work

Use these strategies to effectively market and sell your graphic design creations:

Build Your Own Shop

Creating your own online shop allows the highest margins. Use platforms like Shopify, Squarespace or Wix to open a storefront quickly. Send traffic through marketing. Offer exclusive products not available elsewhere.

Sell on Marketplaces

List products on leading creative marketplaces like Creative Market, Etsy, Design Cuts and Creative Fabrica for built-in traffic and distribution. Useful for testing new products before investing in your own site. Consider exclusivity limitations.

Use Print on Demand

Upload designs to print-on-demand platforms like Society6, Redbubble and Zazzle. Products get printed one at a time when customers order so you don’t need to stock inventory. Very passive and scalable.

Sell Wholesale

Approach websites, shops and brands about carrying your products wholesale. Provide volume discounts for bulk orders they can resell. Good for steady backup orders.

Affiliate Commissions

Partner with affiliate networks like Commission Junction and let them connect your products with relevant sites and blogs who will promote them for a commission on resulting sales.

Run Contests and Giveaways

Offer your products as prizes for contests and giveaways relevant influencers run. Great for exposure and viral reach.

Attract Sponsors

Get brands to sponsor creation of assets like fonts and templates tailored to them that you both can sell. Helps with upfront production costs.

Diversify across multiple sales channels and partnership models to maximize profits and distribution for your graphic design work.

Creating Passive Income Streams

The goal for designers is to shift earnings from active to passive over time. Types of products and strategies that generate ongoing passive revenue include:

Font Licensing

Quality fonts can earn passive royalties for years with no additional effort through sites like Creative Market and Fontspring.

Stock Media Assets

Upload illustrations, patterns, templates and other assets to stock media sites like Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, iStock and Getty Images to earn royalties.

Membership Site

Sell monthly memberships that provide access to your entire back catalog of fonts, templates and other assets. Recurring revenue continues as long as users stay members.

Subscription Products

Offer automatically renewing subscriptions to ongoing assets you design like monthly planner packs, Instagram templates updated weekly, annual font bundles, etc.

Info Products

Create training courses and ebooks teaching your graphic design skills. Passive income continues from digital info product sales.

Affiliate Sales

Earn passive affiliate commissions when followers you refer go on to purchase other products you recommend. Create resource guides highlighting products you endorse.

Sell Merchandise

Upload your designs to print-on-demand merchandise sites. Each order prints one item so you don’t have to stock or fulfill orders. Fully passive.

Building a library of products that generate recurring revenue provides freedom to scale income exponentially and pursue the lifestyle you want.

Graphic Design Trends to Watch For

Keep ahead of upcoming graphic design trends:

User-Generated Content

Consumers create their own version of brands’ social posts, products and more. Design templates and assets facilitating user content creation.

3D/CGI Design Elements

Hyper-realistic 3D illustrations and motion graphics made possible by CGI tools like Blender gain popularity for their immersive and impressive nature.

Psychedelic and Trippy Visuals

Surreal, dreamlike, warped visuals create fantastical atmospheres. Echoes psychedelic poster art of the 1960s.

Maximalist Over Minimalist

After years of dominance, minimalism gives way to ornate maximalist styles again with bold colors, patterns, textures and layers.

Zero UI

Reducing visual elements on interfaces for Zen, purified look. Focused on breathing space and simplicity.

Concept Art

Illustrative art used to convey look, mood and atmosphere gains wider use for presentations, websites, books and journals. Sets a desired conceptual tone.

Y2K Nostalgia

Retro futuristic styling inspired by the year 2000 generates nostalgia for millennials. Think bold geometrics, clashing colors, technical appearance.

Variable Fonts

Customizable open type fonts where properties like width, weight and slant can be adjusted for flexibility.

Typographic Art

Words become the artwork itself through creative display typography, arranging of text to form images and abstract lettering compositions.

Handmade Imperfection

Authentic irregularities like ink splotches, uneven lines, paint drips and stitching continue the handcrafted visual trend.

Spotting graphic design trends early allows you to cater to rising styles before saturation. But always carefully balance current trends with timeless appeal.

Design Resources for Graphic Designers

Use these valuable resources to boost your graphic design business:

Graphic Design Blogs/Mags

Logos 101, Digital Arts, HOW Design, AIGA Eye on Design, It’s Nice That, Design Week, Creative Bloq

Font Inspiration

FontSpark, Typewolf, Fonts in Use, Font Pair, Fonts Magazine

Stock Assets Sites

Adobe Stock, Shutterstock, iStock, Elements Envato, Pixabay

Learning Resources

Skillshare, YouTube, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, Teachable, Domestika

Marketing Tools

Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Facebook Ads, BuySellAds, ShareASale, Etsy Ads

Income Reports

Passive Income Artists, Let’s Blog, The She Approach, Challenging Career, Full Time FBA

Trend Research

Pantone Color of the Year, WGSN, Trend Hunter, Etsy Trend Reports

Small Biz Resources

SquareSpace, Shopify, Wave Accounting, Quickbooks, Zapier, ConvertKit

Design Contests

99Designs, Design Squad, Design Pickle, Penji

Print-on-Demand

Printful, Teespring, Redbubble, Society6, Zazzle, Vistaprint

Leverage sites like these to get inspired, improve skills, source assets, publish and sell your work, save time on operations, and keep up with trends. They will prove invaluable in your design business.

Avoiding Copyright Issues and Licensing Pitfalls

Steer clear of legal headaches by:

• Only selling original work you created yourself. Never use copyright imagery without permission.
• Paying close attention to the licenses for any third party assets like photos that you incorporate, even in a derived new work. Follow attribution requirements.
• Using safe font formats and only selling fonts you have the rights to. Avoid pirated fonts.
• Clarifying who owns rights if collaborating or selling to clients. Get rights agreements in writing.
• Registering your original fonts and graphics with the copyright office for added protection.
• Using trust symbols like the copyright logo

FAQ: Top Selling Graphic Design Assets

1. What are the bestselling graphic design products?

• Logo Templates
• Business Card Templates
• Social Media Post Templates
• Presentation Templates
• Brochure Templates
• Flyer Templates
• Menu Templates
• Resume Templates

2. What are the bestselling fonts and typefaces?

• Display Fonts
• Handwritten Fonts
• Decorative Fonts
• Simple Clean Fonts
• Monogram Fonts
• Doodle Fonts
• Retro and Vintage Fonts
• Cursive and Script Fonts

3. What are the top selling design elements, icons, and graphics?

• Custom Illustrations
• Patterns and Textures
• Washi Tape Graphics
• Frames and Banners
• Modern Icons
• Stickers
• Ornamental Flourishes
• Hand Drawn Elements

4. What are the bestselling design bundles and kits?

• Branding Bundles
• Social Media Templates Bundle
• Flyer Templates Kit
• Pitch Deck Templates
• Recipe Book Templates
• Nonprofit Media Kit Template

5. How can I promote and sell my design work effectively?

• Build Your Own Shop
• Sell on Marketplaces
• Use Print on Demand
• Sell Wholesale
• Affiliate Commissions
• Run Contests and Giveaways
• Attract Sponsors

6. What are some passive income streams for graphic designers?

• Font Licensing
• Stock Media Assets
• Membership Site
• Subscription Products
• Info Products
• Affiliate Sales
• Sell Merchandise

7. What graphic design trends should I watch for?

• User-Generated Content
• 3D/CGI Design Elements
• Psychedelic and Trippy Visuals
• Maximalist Over Minimalist
• Zero UI
• Concept Art
• Y2K Nostalgia
• Variable Fonts
• Typographic Art
• Handmade Imperfection

8. What are some valuable design resources for graphic designers?

• Graphic Design Blogs/Mags
• Font Inspiration
• Stock Assets Sites
• Learning Resources
• Marketing Tools
• Income Reports
• Trend Research
• Small Biz Resources
• Design Contests
• Print-on-Demand

9. How can I avoid copyright issues and licensing pitfalls?

• Only sell original work
• Pay attention to licenses for third party assets
• Use safe font formats and avoid pirated fonts
• Clarify ownership rights with collaborators or clients
• Register original work with the copyright office
• Use trust symbols and clear licensing terms