ASK FU

The header of the site, with ASK FU at the top in large orange type, with the menu items Ask!, Archives, and Who is Fu? below that, and part of a photo accompanying a post below that

Kim had an advice column on another site but wanted to up the frequency of the posts, so she needed a new site built and brand created for it. She asked that the site be very minimalistic. She also wanted a toy robot as a separator between questions in a post. I gave the site a very light scheme, with a punchy, toy-ish orange-red colour as the main brand colour.

Besides the toy robot, the only imagery on the site is the photography that accompanies each post, all of which is taken from Laura’s gorgeous Flickr account. Kim does a fantastic job of matching imagery to post content.

See this site archived. Unfortunately the design is all gone, but the wonderful advice is still there.

The site displayed on both a tablet in landscape and a phone in portrait, showing the header, menu, and a photo of a house for post number 10
A form for asking Fu for advice, with an email, subject line, question, and captcha inputs, with the submit button reading Ask Fu!
The Archives page which shows a simple title, orange dots to denote pages, and a list of archived advice pages
An individual post, with a photo followed by the number of the post, the title and date, a series of social sharing buttons, and the content of the post
Three renders of the site's mascot robot, in two colorations, one in orange and white, one in black with orange highlights

Responsive Layout

The very minimalist layout and site content made it pretty easy to scale from phone to desktop while retaining the bold style.

The Submission Form

The Archives

A simple list of archived posts, with a quick summary of the topics covered in each post.

A Post

Each post would start with a photo, followed by the post number, date, obligatory sharing links, a title that suited two submissions, then the two pairs of submission and advice sets.
On the right you can see an ad for Kim’s longtime friend and collaborator, andrea bennett’s Canoodlers.

Ask Fu's Mascot Robot

While the orange and white version matched the site’s colour scheme better, the robot was only used at a very small size between posts. The black with orange highlights worked better at that size, basically a silhouette. The head was used as the site’s favicon.