The best publisher 404 error pages

Everyone loves a good 404 page. Once a backwater of Web design, these pages are used to tell site visitors when they’ve reached a broken link. But a good 404 page can inject some unexpected humor and levity into a user experience that’s invariably dull and confusing. Publishers get that as well, and a few have truly upped the ante.

“I think that with anything you make, you should care about all the details,” said Bloomberg chief digital content officer Joshua Topolsky, who helped design one of the more unique 404 pages in recent memory for Bloomberg Politics. “This is just a little thing that we thought deserved consideration. Why not do something fun with it?”

bloomberg-404

To be sure, Bloomberg Politics isn’t alone. From Complex to Clickhole, here’s a look at some publishers’ more interesting, creative and downright strange 404 pages out in the wild:

Complex layers on the Kanye

complex-404


Clickhole’s version of the Fail Whale is, well, a Fuck-Up Frog

clickhole-404


The New Yorker digs into the archives

newyorker-404

Vox: Let us explain

vox-404


USA Today’s FTW scores on a fumble

ftw-404


Meow you see me, meow you don’t

cosmo-404


We see what you did there. Nerds.

forbes-404


Over at the Dodo, unicorns. Obviously

dodo2

Funny or Die goes for the not-actually-that-funny, low-hanging Al Gore fruit

funny-or-die-404

 

 

NPR: Here are some other missing things

NPR-404

 

Bloomberg outdoes itself

bloomberg-404

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