Why IndoFolio?

I wanted to use a domain name that makes it clear that I am from India and Indo is the most popular prefix used to indicate India. My second requirement was to include “folio” which makes it obvious that this is my portfolio.

Concept behind the design

My name “Gopal” is another manifestation of Krishna who was one of the incarnations/avatars of Lord Vishnu according to Hindu mythology. This inspired me to include other avatars of Lord Vishnu as well. Nothing religious! This was just an attempt to come up with a unique design concept.

Just to let you know, I am a great fan of Russian Art! and was very concerned about achieving an Indo-Russian effect. Though it took me some time playing with Fireworks and Photoshop, I’m happy with the final output.

Softwares Used

The initial draft of IndoFolio was created using Fireworks and was purely vector. Then I took it to photoshop, to burn and dodge a few areas which helped me achieve the “painting” effect. I believe Photoshop gives more control when it comes to burning and dodging.

In the following images, you can compare the Fireworks and Photoshop version of the avatars. I’ve given a one line description about each avatar, for those who are curious

Image Optimization

Optimizing the images was a challenge as I had to maintain the image quality. Transparency being a major thing to consider, I had to convert most of the images to 24bit PNGs. I used some online image optimizers like PNGCrush to reduce the file size.

HTML/CSS Development

This was really challenging as my goal was to create a single page website using these avatars. I planned to use JQuery to make the site more lively, different and user friendly. Using JQuery intensely for a single page website is no sin

After doing some research, I decided go ahead with horizontal parallax. For more details about Parallax check out my previous blog post (I created this post while working on IndoFolio).

So that’s it! I would be glad to hear your comments (good or bad) on IndoFolio.

Paper Planes in websites

Please share your thoughts on this trend using the comment form below

In one of my previous trend reviews, I had mentioned about the cofeecup trend. What if you drop the cofee on your table or paper? yes, it becomes another trend

Do you think adding some coffee stains to your design would make it look better? Here goes a list of hand-picked designs that proves it! I’ve included links to tutorials on how to create such stains in photoshop as well.

Stains in websites

Coffeenatic

iSpoil

teh C peng

The Greg Brady Project

The Piss Biscuit

Mike Desjardins

What would you need to create these cool hot stains?

Photoshop brushes

Now, how to create these brushes?

Coffee stain social networking iconset

Wallpaper

wallpaper

And finally, a twitter theme

I hope you enjoyed this post. Stay tuned!

1. Wild Zeitung

2. Art Flavours

3. BrandStorm

4. Cofee In Town

5. Design54

6. Ficod 2008

7. Haus Hoyer

8. Icon Icon

9. Jimmyoh

10. Kinoz

11. Lee Munroe

12. Rodney Edwards

13. teh C peng

14. The Piss Biscuit

15. Jwhanif

1. Amuki

2. Auchtertool Kirk

3. Blurb

4. Brian Wilkins

5. Concept7

6. Deadfall Camoflage

7. Dreamling

8. DrSoft

9. Eko Udruga

10. Ethem Budak

11. Jeremy Thomas

12. Josh Buckley

13. Sako Karalekian

14. Marco Kuttkat

15. Medics Away

16. Membran Ventile

17. Onskelista

18. Plej

19. Prolong

20. PSD CSS Pro

21. Revolution Driving Tuition

22. Simply Fired

23. Spoon Graphics

24. Team Green Online

25. Totally Her

26. Eton Digital

27. Level9 Design

28. Olly Hite

29. Web Notes

30. Works4Sure

31. Black Wave Creative

32. Shawn Johnston

1. Adservizimpresa

2. Bcandullo

3. Bigsweaterdesign

4. Blkmtnstudio

5. Davidhellmann

6. Fabricadecaricaturas

7. Fortysevenmedia

8. Fseid

9. Iemai

10. Jameslaicreative

11. Ledzuc

12. Madebyabe

13. Meaganfisher

14. Mootygraphicdesign

15. Nataliejost

16. Seftontransmail

17. Swiths

18. Thecakewalkcary

19. Ushops

20. Wedomarkup

21. Mountain Side Guest House

22. El Rincon De Blablaton

The initial version was a static one with around 5 pages and served as my personal portfolio. I started working on the current design about 6 months(not continuously) back. My deep love for webdesign, web2.0 and blogging has forced me to come up with ProductiveDreams. This is my public blog where in I post freebies, my views on webdesign, tutorials and ofcourse my works.