I was a huge fan of Marvel Comics growing up, and love Scott McCloud’s books on comic art’s ability to communicate across languages via symbology, etc.  Found an article recently by Lukas Mathis of ignorethecode.net that applies cartoon principles to User Interface (UI) design.  Not quite ‘less is more’, but rather ‘just enough is correct’ – check it out, it’s an interesting read.

People are confused by symbols if they have too many or too few details. They will recognize UI elements which are somewhere in the middle.

The goal is not to make your user interface as realistic as possible. The goal is to add those details which help users identify what an element is, and how to interact with it, and to add no more than those details. UI elements are abstractions which convey concepts and ideas; they should retain only those details that are relevant to their purpose. UI elements are almost never representations of real things. Adding too much realism can cause confusion.