John Ibanez

No, It’s not kissing your readers after leaving you a comment on your latest blog post. Neither is it a Dark Jedi Master Guide of kissing someone using the force. K.I.S.S. as defined by Wikipedia is “Keep it simple, stupid”. And further googling gave me another definition, “Keep it simple and straightforward”. K.I.S.S States that simplicity should be a key goal and unnecessary complexity avoided.

To us bloggers, writers, designers and almost everyone. Many of us are guilty of putting too much of unnecessary mess on our work. At times, we put too much emphasis on the complexity and we forget about the usability and outcome of our work. And after pulling it all together, you realize that its all cluttered and messy. Lets just put it this way, its like ordering your Venti Hot Caramel Macchiato at your local Starbucks coffee house. Now if the barista wasn’t trained and he wanted to please you (maybe for being a loyal customer). What he does is Put 5 Shots of espresso and 6 pumps of vanilla syrup on your Venti cup. Now would that please you? I guess not. Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s once said “It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”.

For blogging and design, what I notice these days is that people tend to put so much clutter on their site. Even I am guilty of this one, that is one of the reason why I took away most of the badges I have on my sidebar. Instead, I replaced them with google ads which I think would be the best way to give reference links to my visitors while monetizing my blog. If you may notice the 125×125 Ad Blocks on my sidebar, I’m not paid to post those ads and neither am I earning a percentage of every sale that my site leads. I have those as references to my readers. Moving forward, I want to show you some sites which practice K.I.S.S. knowingly and/or indirectly:

Exhibit A: Jehzlau Concepts

Arrow 1 : If you’ll notice the title, the typography is simple. No unnecessary formatting. Just Bold.

Arrow 2 : Emphasized in his sidebar are syndication links. A lot of readers like me tend to look for a Feed or Subscribe button within the page of a good blog. In this case, its blatantly emphasized. Another thing is you’ll see is the search box. Either the entire web or just within the blog, you can conveniently use it. Talk about  usability Right?

Arrow 3: Images are Shown only in the newest post. Which I think has been effective in diverting the attention of the readers directly to the newest article/post in his blog.

I’ve always envied how Jehzeel Laurente brought up his blog. From the Niche to the structure. Here you can truly see a work of art in action.

Exhibit B: Batang Yagit

Arrow 1: What could be smarter than a Top Page Navigation with a search form? I like the way the author used the space on the top navigation.

Arrow 2: If you’ll notice, The newest post Title always gets a bigger font size. Like Jehzlaus site, this directs the attention of the reader to the newest article/post. You can see the difference with arrow 4.

Arrow 3: Again, the Feed Button/Link is placed perfectly where readers can see it.

One thing you’ll notice about these two blogsites is that they perfectly positioned the elements which are essential to give the readers a soothing experience and convenience to browse over the articles/posts. Remember, as madebyelephant said “People do not only visit your site, they also experience it”.

Okay now, not to raise my own stool but I’ve simply followed the K.I.S.S. Principle on my site and since the day I’ve revamped my theme (Raped the Default Kubrick theme), my site has been recieving some traffic and some good feedbacks from my readers. I bet now, SE’s can read my site better ( Even though my site haven’t passed the HTML Markup Validation). So from now on till the day I cant pay my hosting. I’ll be following the K.I.S.S. Principle not just on this site, but also on all of my work.

For me, K.I.S.S. makes a lot of sense. How about you?

<em>yea i know, i suck at closing articles. :)
</em>

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 11:45 pm and is filed under Blogging, Flash Games, Make Money Online, Recommended, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.