Like most designers, the folks at Inkd tend to spend at least a few minutes of each day browsing a variety of creative media to keep ideas fresh and trends on the radar. Today we happened to wander across several great photographers by chance while strolling through our regular digital haunts. Though showcasing great photos is a bit of a change of pace for us, we still thought we’d share.

Proceed on for more work that caught our eye. Different tastes abound – so the collection’s quite eclectic. Click on any of the shots to view more of that great photographer’s work.
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Pizzas, bottles of wine, sodas and people as far as the eye can see inside the Inkd global HQ today. That’s because our space became home to a variety of folks from the Seattle tech and startup community all attending the Seattle Lunch 2.0 networking and information session.

We had a great time hosting the event along with our office mates Wishpot and Zooppa – showcasing the combined experience and insight of the folks heading up companies incubated by H-Farm and Curious Office.

More snapshots of the event after the jump. If you joined us here, please let us know what you thought in the comments!
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Inspiration can be critical to overcoming a creative design block, or just keeping the air in your creative sails. Finding and routinely following creative design resources is a great way to stay on top of trends, spark ideas, and simply appreciate the great works that inspire professional graphic designers.

In the wide web world these days the amount of variety can be dizzying, and with the melding of graphic design for print with web design, many resources focus on a mixture of tips, tricks and showcase tutorials that jump back and forth between the coded and physical realm. But what’s best for pure print inspiration?

Our library of graphic design templates here at Inkd has become a very popular source of inspiration in it’s own right – with 1,000′s of designs in a marketplace that allows for cutting edge style to flourish without the usual limitations of a client relationship. We appreciate the notoriety, so we thought we’d grab some opinions from our hundreds of contributing designers and our own internal design team. Here’s the top resources hand-picked by inspired and inspiring professional graphic designers.

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The right typeface can make all the difference to complete a stellar design concept. Many of the design templates on Inkd rely on creativity with type, but what might surprise you is that many of our designers utilize some of the 1000s of free fonts – quality free fonts – readily available online.

Professional high quality fonts are a major asset to any designer’s toolbox, but free fonts also abound and can be a terrific resource if you can separate the wheat from the chaff. From massive collections, to small collectives, and the best ways to keep current – continue on for our roundup of the best free font resources today.

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Many graphic designers and creatives work in environments that can benefit from mobile access to tools of their trade. If not full-time, many work at least part-time in a freelance manner too.

There hasn’t been a better time than the present for mobile workforces, and one device in particular has pushed mobile utilities to the edge of what’s currently possible.

Last week the Inkd offices officially became an all iPhone workforce, with some last late comers finally joining the party. With every new eye’s wide addition to the iPhone posse comes a flurry of recommended tweaks, tailoring, and app suggestions. We thought we might as well put forth this handy list of our favorites from the mobile savvy Inkd team.

Many of these apps are available for both the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Some are free, and others cost a little scratch, but all hit our bar of usefulness. Read on and let us know what apps you’re using too!

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There is a wealth of information for graphic designers of all stripes to be found on the web, but nothing beats the in-depth articles (not to mention the sensory benefits) of a good graphic design mag. Inkd has a bevy of resources, but our favorite remains the bound stacks scattered around the office.

Some magazines are highly focused on graphic design, some are great for general inspiration.  Many  have at least annual calls for design and competition. Most also have free trials and discounts for designers belonging to organizations or for students, and all of these magazines have resource rich companion websites.

So read on below, share your favorites with us, and maybe bookmark this one. Here are the top resources you can find in print, and about print, that we keep on our shelves.

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Tonight’s the night for Inkd and a chance at even more recognition for great design.  The Seattle 2.0 awards ceremony is finally upon us, and a hardworking part of our team looks to add to many previous accolades of Inkd design, as Art Director Keith Harper is a finalist for Best Startup Product Designer.

Inkd’s own Kelly Smith is actually on the awards panel that chose finalist for many categories, but the award itself is the people’s choice.  If you are planning on attending, you might find this information useful.  If you can’t attend, you can still follow all the action on their live stream.

The whole Inkd team is grateful for the recognition from the nomination, and we’re all very proud of Keith as his design continues to be very well received.