How to Get Great SVG Backgrounds for Free

A website named svgbackgrounds.com provides a service that allows web designers to modify previously designed Scalable Vector Graphics background patterns and freely download them for use as backgrounds on their websites. It is maintained by Matt Lipman, creative director of the Massachusetts web design firm Bump Set Creative.

The website displays a background that updates its design and colors as the user makes changes to several customization options provided by an on-site UI. If the user clicks the circular pattern for the "Subtle Prism," for example, the background of the page will display it as a preview pattern, and a "CSS Output" field provides the CSS code responsible for achieving the effect. This is not a traditionally downloadable graphics file; copying and pasting this code into a website's CSS document will create the background pattern via SVG when a web page pointing to the document is brought up in a browser.

While a preset background is currently being displayed on SVG Backgrounds' website, the UI box enables guests to change the core colors the current pattern is using and adjust the scale of other aspects specific to the pattern itself. In most cases, the scale can be adjusted to make the pattern contract or expand, and the opacity of the edges involved in the pattern can also be altered; regardless of the changes made, there will be no downgrade in visual clarity because of the nature of browser-based vector graphics. The moment a single change is committed, the background preview will instantly update and the contents of the CSS Output section will update accordingly.

The website allows guests to freely download modified SVG backgrounds and use them for their own websites. However, the CSS code supplying any form of the SVG designs is provided under License CC BY 4.0, which effectively prevents businesses from using them for their own websites unless they publicly attribute the borrowed code to SVG Backgrounds and affiliate with it. The site's owner is currently considering pricing models for websites to pay in order to be able to use the backgrounds without having to attribute them.