I love this acronym, although I’m not crazy about the word “stupid”. When trying to make a sale, or deliver a message, simplicity is your best hope of getting your point across. When communicating your message, of course you want to use well crafted sentences. But, when designing you website, newsletter, or advertisements, clarity goes beyond the words you use.
In 2008, psychologists from the University of Michigan performed research to determine the effects of perceived complexity. A group of students were presented with two copies of a recipe for Japanese rolls, one printed in Times New Roman and one in Brush. They were then asked to judge the difficulty of the recipes. The students decided the recipe with the more elaborate Brush typeface was more difficult than the recipe printed in Times New Roman. And the students were less likely to even try to prepare “those” Japanese rolls, even though the recipes were identical.
The brain takes information in from many angles. If presented using intricate font, the associated information will usually be tagged as potentially complex. Because we are constantly bombarded with data, our brains helps us out by using broad filters. Keep this in mind when putting together anything with a visual aspect for your business. You don’t want people leaving your website or deleting your newsletters because they are too cluttered, busy or frilly. I know it can be fun to play with all of the available fronts and colors, but make sure your not driving away your potential customers.
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Good experiment to highlight to us Beth! Thanks for the reminder. I will keep my writing as simple, and easy to read for the users as possible.
Your writing is great, so I don't think you need to worry about it
I loved reading about this experiment. And thought about times when I've left a website because I felt like too much work to get to the heart of the message. But of course, I like my info short, sweet, and to the point 
I've been a huge fan of KISS for a while now... and I throw it around to people on a near regular basis! I think people have a natural habit of over-complicating things when they really don't need to. Sometimes it's good to remember that life doesn't have to be this complex puzzle; and that keeping it simple often IS better.
Definitely. more complex, longer, etc... is not always better. In fact it frequently is not! Thanks for taking the time to comment.