Back in the day, marketers subscribed to clip art services, which sent out dozens of seasonal designs each month that could literally be clipped from oversized pages and pasted into layouts when art or illustration was needed.

Today, like many other things, the Internet has made that cumbersome and costly process obsolete. Now, there are a lot of art Freesources available online for businesses, groups and organizations doing smart marketing on a limited budget:

1. One of the handiest suppliers of click art can be your own computer if you use Microsoft Office. There are hundreds of art options already programmed into Microsoft Word. Just go to the "Insert" heading, and click "Picture." Then, you can choose "clip art" and pull up a directory of a few hundred image choices to download.

2. Or, you can simply go to: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/clipart/default.aspx - whether you run Word or not - and download hundreds more.

3. http://www.cksinfo.com/index2.html offers another large selection of subjects and styles.

4. http://www.free-clipart.net gives you thousands of options in 45 categories.

5. http://parenting.leehansen.com/downloads/clipart/index.htm has choices especially suitable for use with holiday messages and for schools and churches.

6. If your tastes and your graphics capabilities are a bit more sophisticated, http://digital-clipart.com/dc_free_files.php can supply you with high-end graphics ranging from team mascot images to tattoo-style and tribal patterns. Not all the downloads here are free - just the ones listed under "samples." All are vector-based graphics in EPS or Illustrator versions. (They will convert to PDFs, which you can use instead, but won't be scalable.)

7. http://www.fresherimage.com features a host of clip art, borders and even single-panel cartoons ready to publish.

8. Another source of free images is http://a-zfonts.com/free_clipart

9. You'll need to navigate around a lot of ads but if you do, http://www.1clipart.com gives you 10,000 free illustrations in 300 categories.

10. Another 22,000 pieces of art are to be found at http://www.clipartheaven.com.

11. And you can find many illustration options - from antique maps to portraits of famous people - that are free to use under public domain or the Creative Commons license at Wikimedia, the visual "sister" of the online encylopedia Wikipedia: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

So, there you go. Hundreds of thousands of useable pieces of art without picking up a pencil or pen - and without paying a penny.

NOTE: If you're looking for free photography for your marketing use, see my article Stock PhotographFREE.

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