While building out the template for this blog, it occurred to me: What if didn’t add any outside links? What if the page was designed to be a stub, a dead-end, where you could not progress from?

Typically, we want to encourage the user to explore onward, to discover more content. But considering how I browse the web, with multiple constantly tabs open, perhaps it makes more sense to discourage the user from going any further.

I listened to Dance Yrself Clean again for the first time in a while. This Is Happening was in my heavy rotation last year. It was like finding a favorite toy that your had forgotten about. “Oh yeah, I do have this! Why don’t I listen to this every day!”

I love this song. I love the way it make me feel. It’s stupid and blah and a joke for three minutes before snap-blasting into a torrent.

Years ago Zeldman questioned why there were no masterpieces in web design. Why our medium, unlike print, or music, or film, hasn’t produced works of art that can be enjoyed years from now.

Listening again to Mr. Murphey’s nine minute masterpiece, an answer coalesces. Web design isn’t emotional.

At the end of the day, web design is neat. But I can’t imagine it moving anybody. I can’t imagine it opening up a part of someone that they didn’t know that had in them. I can’t imagine anyone buying it as a poster and sticking it up on their wall cause that’s how they want their college friends to identify them.

Emotion is what makes it stick to your ribs. And right now, web design just doesn’t have it.

We ought to fix that.