Somebody in the office passing by did a quick glance at my screen and said:
"For Fux Sake?"
Laughed and was suddenly interested in the content of the website. He was a little bit disappointed after I mentioned it was U-X only.
Was this on purpose? Have anyone else noticed it too? For me it was clear that it was reading "For UX sake" but I'm not a native english speaker, so who knows.
Thanks @JonW for your comment on my professionalism and my community upstandinglynessism.
Yes, I took a great deal of professional care designing this ad - no cheap laughs were being saught here.
This was a task of consideration of our users, while seeking to achieve an objective of appealing to their curiosity with a single glance.
The design was to be neither too obvious, nor too discrete, but above all I wanted to delight and surprise, but not to offend (NSFW) (at least not too much or too blatantly).
I wanted it to be seen by some and not by others - I wanted it to be there and yet not there. I wanted to toy with the gestalt principles of grouping, proximity, alignment and good continuation.
It was an exercise in demonstrating the Law of Prägnanz, and Ockham's Razor.
To some it may appear obvious. To others it may have to be pointed out. Many will just accept the simplest interpretation - the one that seems natural.
Some may regularly use the three word phrase and spot it quicker than those less inclined to swear.
Some may not be sure whether it was intentional - say nothing, and give it the benefit of the doubt. This adds a little something to the user experience.
I considered the font, the angle of the text, the top (instead of bottom) alignment of the F with the or; the verticality of the backbone of the F to match the regular verticals of the ux; the placement of the F half overlapping the ux and half raised above.
Oh yes - this was very much deliberate. For this I deserve nothing better than a good 3 day ban - or maybe - just maybe, it's another example of how to teach UX theory to beginners.
This is one of the Community Promotion Ads, submitted by the UX.SE site members and voted on via this site (meta.ux.stackexchange).
From the original post: Community Promotion Ads - 2012
Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right sidebar. The purpose of this question is the vetting process. Images of the advertisements are provided, and community voting will enable the advertisements to be shown.
All stackexchange sites run these promo ad suggestion events every year, and the top ones are rolled out to the main ux.stackexchange site.
As for whether or not is says 'FUX', well that's all in how you read it. ;) It was designed by Roger Attrill the highest-rep user on this site (by quite a long way, I might add) so you'll have to ask him. He's in the main chat site occasionally so you can ping him a message and get him to explain himself. He's a very professional chap though, and someone as upstanding in this community as himself isn't likely to try to sneak in a swear word just for a cheap laugh.
Probably.
