• The act of caressing with the lips (or an instance thereof)
• Are a New York City-based heavy metal band that became famous in the mid- to late 1970s.
• Stands for Keep It Simple Stupid. We find this to be self explanatory and don’t want to overcomplicate such an elegant acronym.

[mostly taken from Google]

Clearly, this post will not be about kissing one’s loved one. It will definitely not be anything, at all, to do with the blood spitting, masked-mogul Gene Simmons and his band.

No, this post will be about keeping things simple, stupid.

The ‘Kiss’ principle states that design simplicity should be a key goal, avoiding unnecessary complexity, and in complete truth, ‘choice’.

This simple acronym can be applied on the majority of ‘the webs best bits’.

Facebook, for example, have a brilliant feature for when you’re writing to somebody on their ‘wall’. When you insert a URL into the post field it kick starts a beautiful AJAX engine. Beautiful, if you want to insert images from that particular web page, inherently annoying if you don’t. The Facebook protocol pulls in images from your chosen web page, and by images I mean all the images on the page. This can prove somewhat annoying if you don’t actually want an image to be displayed in your post. This is reinforced if you try and click on the ‘Cancel’ button, as almost 80% of the time it doesn’t work.

Another tool I find to be annoying some of the time, and don’t get me wrong, other times it’s brilliant, is personalised web links from Google. It proves quite hard in the working world when I have clients telling me they’re appearing on page ‘X’, and I can see them on page ‘X²’.  I know you can turn this option off (actually I think its turned off to start with?!) but again, simple searching, where everyone’s search results are exactly the same would make life a little easier.

This acronym is particularly in my mind this weekend due to some work I’ve been doing on Streamline’s latest project. I have been editing a long list, of ‘things something can do’.  I found myself going on, and on,  - and for what? If I had kept the descriptions simple I would have still got the overall idea across to its readers, but at half the overall time. The list was started by someone else, so naturally, I wanted to improve upon the content and describe things further. Sadly, as said, I just found myself overcomplicating things, and at the end of the day, writing for writings sake.

Working at Streamline Media has also shown me that sticking to basics, and to what you know works (the majority of the time) really is key. You can sit and think of ways to ‘reinvent the wheel’ for hours and hours at end, and again, in most cases, where has it got you?

However, this isn’t always the case obviously. Some things are worth nurturing and giving that extra thought to, but it’s always key to Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Next week I’ll probably be blabbering on about the grand old ‘Kitchen Sink Syndrome’ - you couldn’t make these things up could you…

If you haven’t already guessed I am talking about .net

In every shape and form, and in every way possible it is a great magazine.   Brilliant content, amazing tutorials and heaps of cheats, tips and tricks to get around even the stickiest of problems.

However, one thing that continually gets to me is the fact that the designers that build off these website scenario’s always seem to be employed, or linked with big companies and or clients.

Maybe .net should invite some ’smaller’ but just as talented and willing designers to have a mooch around the pages of their magazine.

.net, if you’re listening, I’ve spoken.

The murkier end, I don’t mean to sound rude by that, but lets face it, they don’t call it the ‘big smoke’ for no reason at all.

I mean all those people, in all that space, I could actually go on, and on, and on. But I wont. It doesn’t make for good reading me just sitting and typing. And on a totally different note, and quite a silly one baring in mind my past comments (and by past I mean two lines above) I would actually like to work in London one day, not just yet though, im more than happy with the ‘norf’ at the moment.

Right, to the point of this, www.futureofwebdesign.com. This event is set to be one of the best in the country this year. I’ve been eying it up, and toying with the idea for a while now. People from prestigious companies such as Last FM, Digg, Pownce, Agency Net and Poke will be talking and no doubt showing their wonderful findings and theories, and with any luck there will be a handful of freebies for the young aspiring web bods this event will no doubt attract.

I especially like that there are women talking. Women talking. Talking women. Women talking. Woman, talking, about new media. Who would have thought that there would be real women in this industry. I mean on my course that I tediously played part to, there were four core groups. Web design, interactive multimedia, digital & interactive television and games design. I would say there were around sixty young budding new-media-ites; four of which were of the lady persuasion.

It will be refreshing to hear a ladies views on design, the media world is very heavily dominated by males, and our ego’s, and to be quite honest with you, its all getting a little bit boring.

I might actually get the boss to pay for it. So Pete, if you happen to read this, you may want to click here.

It is without doubt one of the best articles of advertising I have ever come across. Subtle, clever, and one you’re going to remember. I won’t lie, the actual meaning behind the piece didn’t really interest me. I mean, I’m not a cyclist, and I don’t live in London, therefore it wouldn’t take you a lot to come to the conclusion that I don’t cycle in London. However, this doesn’t mean I don’t want people to be safe…

Anyway, back to the point.

I don’t want to ruin it for you, so there isn’t really a lot I can say on this matter, apart from the fact that upon me showing it to my little brother he came back to me with “I got 12 the first time!”

Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/v/Ahg6qcgoay4&hl=en

Yes. Blogs. Everyone uses them, everyone reads them. I thought I’d try my own luck for a while with one.

I will be posting up here my work, thoughts, findings, out rages…all those kind of things.

I will also be posting up links to things relevant to my line of work.

Until later.

Nick