Simple – Marcus' Blog

Good morning! Today sees my new WordPress theme launch.

marcusblog-wordpress-theme-2015

When I say “new WordPress theme” I really mean “basic stripped down version of a WordPress theme requiring only the minimum functionality and styles for it to work”.

I’ve always been an on-and-off blogger mainly due to not wanting to blog when I don’t like my theme, so my clever idea was to make this blog just about the content.

All you UX people out there will argue that I’m not maximising clickthroughs, that there’s no real thought-out user journey and maybe some aspects are clunky. I’m not going to disagree, I also don’t care. The important thing for me is that I start writing again. The styles I’ve built make posts easy to read on various devices and that’s all that really matters to me right now.

The design was a tricky one for me, as it’s a big part of my profession I strive to make everything I do look as good as it can. To some degree I’ve done that with this theme considering the restrictions I’ve put on it. It’s still early days and I’m still tweaking little bits that bug me but on the whole I can live with it.

I’d ask for feedback, but as I said above – I don’t really care right now, but obviously you can leave a comment telling me how awesome I am.

Not only the new, but pretty much every product that has been around for a few years has evolved into a more simple form of itself whilst achieving even more functionality than before.

You can look at any computer, gaming console or fireplace to see that this, in the modern world that we’re living in today, is the case!

Granted, there are the odd exceptions such as that oh so familiar, modestly named game ‘Pong’. I can say that in confidence as it is still a widely played (and enjoyed) game, maybe under a different alias, but nevertheless, it’s still the same game.

Why? Simple.

It was a simple idea executed to perfection. This is something I think a lot of people take for granted nowadays.

I’ve seen hundereds of over crowded advertisements in an attempt to make them more appealing or informative, yet I’ve also seen a monkey piss in it’s own mouth. I personally prefer the latter, it’s memorable, straight to the point, and humourus to the right audience.

Leonardo Da Vinci once said “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication”

Which leads me to my next thought.

Can simple be too simple? What is too simple?