K.I.S.S. - Keep it Stupid Simple

19th century book of incantations, written by a Welsh physician

K.I.S.S.

Keep It Stupid Simple
There’s an old saying that goes, “Keep it simple, stupid!”—the KISS principle. It was coined by aeronautical engineer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson of Lockheed’s Skunk Works in the 1960s, a man who built spy planes designed to perform under extreme conditions. His motto meant that a design should be so clear, so direct, that even a mechanic in the field could fix it with the most basic tools. Simple meant functional. Simple meant survival.

But artists are not in the business of designing fighter jets. We’re not trying to streamline destruction. We are, in a sense, engaged in the opposite act: the making of life, the weaving of meaning, the expression of something unquantifiable. So I propose a modest rephrasing of Johnson’s dictum—one that shifts it from the corporate and mechanical to the human and creative.

Keep it Stupid Simple.

I’ve dropped the comma. The phrase breathes easier now. It’s no longer an order barked by an engineer under pressure, but a humble reminder whispered to oneself. “Keep it stupid simple” feels slightly foolish, slightly self-effacing, which is good. It knocks the ego down a peg. It points to the innocence that underlies true creativity—the willingness to play, to explore, to not know too much in advance.

When you are an artist, it’s dangerously easy to overcomplicate things. We layer meaning upon meaning, technique upon theory, until the original spark is buried under a pile of intellectual debris. We lose the freshness that first drew us to make something. Complexity has its place, of course—but it should grow organically from simplicity, not replace it. The simplest gesture, when done with full attention, carries more life than a thousand convoluted ones done in confusion.

Unlike the engineer, the artist rarely works under the clear pressure of a defined outcome. There’s no boss breathing down your neck demanding a finished prototype by Friday. That freedom is both blessing and curse. Without external constraints, we often drift into clouds of ambiguity. We want to “be an artist,” but the goal is so undefined that it becomes a fog. We circle endlessly around the idea of creating, but never land on the practice itself.

That’s why “Keep it Stupid Simple” is a survival tool. It’s a way to cut through the fog. Make one drawing. Write one line. Collage one scrap. Don’t wait for the grand vision or the perfect conditions. Let the act itself lead you. Simplicity restores rhythm. It gives the imagination a place to rest and the hand a task to do.

To live as an artist is to make clarity a habit. You don’t need to solve the entire mystery of your life’s work today. You just need to begin, again and again, in the simplest way possible.

So let’s leave the engineering to the engineers. Ours is the craft of becoming, of practicing simplicity not as reduction, but as renewal.

Keep it stupid simple, my friends. It’s not an insult. It’s an incantation.

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Some Stupid Simple Advice

If we are going to live by the principle of Keep it Stupid Simple, then we might as well start collecting a few stupid simple rules to go along with it. Nothing fancy, nothing to memorize or frame. Just small reminders to help us stay in motion when the mind starts turning art into algebra.

Here are a few:

Commit, begin.
The hardest part of any creative act is deciding to start. Once you do, the energy shifts immediately. Commitment isn’t a grand declaration; it’s a quiet, personal contract between you and your work. Begin where you are, with what you have.

Start, continue.
Don’t overthink the sequence. Most of the time, starting and continuing are the same motion. What matters is not how you start but that you don’t stop at the starting.

Scribble something.
Draw a line. Make a mark. Scrawl nonsense on the page. Do anything that interrupts inertia. The purpose of the first gesture is to lower the bar so the second one can walk through.

Use what’s around you.
Don’t wait for better materials, better lighting, or better ideas. The world you’re already in is full of raw material. Use the scraps on your desk, the junk mail, the light through your window.

Keep moving.
Momentum solves more problems than planning. A body in motion stays in motion, and an artist in motion stays alive to possibility.

Don’t fix, flow.
When something isn’t working, don’t freeze up. Move sideways. Shift materials, change the scale, alter the rhythm. Creative block often breaks when you stop trying to fix it.

Forget perfection.
Perfection is sterile. The living work—the one that breathes and surprises you—will always have a little dirt under its nails.

Return often.
Come back to your work, even if only for a few minutes. Regular contact is what turns creative activity into a life practice.

Endings don’t matter much.
Most of what you think are endings are just pauses. Completion is relative. The point is to stay in relationship with the making.

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Simplicity isn’t the opposite of depth. It’s the doorway to it. Every great body of work, every lifelong practice, begins with something stupid simple—one committed act, one line, one spark. Often the simplest things are the most profound.

That’s the secret: there is no secret. Commit, begin. Start, continue. Scribble something. The rest unfolds from there. Don’t over think it. Oops, there is another one.