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?”
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
Clickhole’s version of the Fail Whale is, well, a Fuck-Up Frog
The New Yorker digs into the archives
Vox: Let us explain
USA Today’s FTW scores on a fumble
Meow you see me, meow you don’t
We see what you did there. Nerds.
Over at the Dodo, unicorns. Obviously
Funny or Die goes for the not-actually-that-funny, low-hanging Al Gore fruit
NPR: Here are some other missing things
Bloomberg outdoes itself
More in Media
Why some publishers aren’t ready to monetize generative AI chatbots with ads yet
Monetization of generative AI chatbot experiences is slow going. Some publishing execs said they’re not ready to add advertising to these products until they scale or can build a subscription model first.
Media Briefing: Publishers who bet on events and franchises this year are reaping the rewards
Tentpole events and franchises are helping publishers lock in advertising revenue.
With Firefly Image 3, Adobe aims to integrate more AI tools for various apps
New tools let people make images in seconds, create image backgrounds, replacing parts of an image and use reference images to create with AI.