rampstyle / issue

We prefer to experience our world not only as rather complicated, but also as extremely complex, and while complicated systems ultimately offer themselves dutifully to our understanding through clearly defined connections of the individual elements as well as causal relationships of cause and effect, this unfortunately does not apply to the complex systems. Here, everything is non-linear, wild, open-ended, inscrutable, unpredictable. And there we are, more or less merrily in the middle of it all. Mega enormous complex dang it! Simple looks different. Doesn’t it? Exactly! We took a closer look – and discovered the fascination and effective validity of solutions that are as simple, minimalist and easy to understand as possible. In short, the KISS principle applies: “Keep it simple, stupid”, “stupid” here being a humorous form of address, with the flippant but well-intentioned meaning “Don’t be so stupid as to rack your brains when there’s an easier way to do it!” Seen in this light, KISS, which can be applied as a guiding principle to a wonderful number of tasks and applications, can certainly be understood as an ingenious principle in the sense of “Keep it simple and smart”. Another way of getting to the heart of things.