50 Examples of Creative 404 – Page Not Found Pages

March 10, 201068 Comments

There are two ways you can go when designing a 404 page for your website – you could go the sensible route and make it usable and try to help the reader find exactly what they were looking for or, you could design a 404 page that not only defines the character of the web site or the designer, but also makes it a pleasure and surprise. Its amazing the effect a sprinkle of humor and some creativity can have on someone and it will certainly make your site that little bit more memorable.

Below, we have a collection of sites with original, creative and generally humorous 404 pages. You may notice that some do not meet even the most basic usability guidelines, but who cares, they make us smile! Hope you enjoy them.

This article has been written by Richie Thimmaiah.

Previous parts of the Top 50 Web Design Styles Series

50 Examples of Large Photography Backgrounds within Web Design »
50 Examples of Creative 404 – Page Not Found Pages »
A Showcase of 50 Amazing Personal Blog Web Designs »
50 Creative Examples of Illustrations in Web Design »
50 Professional Web Design Agency Web Sites »
50 Bright and Vibrant Web Designs – Color Inspiration »
50 Impressive Magazine and Newspaper Styled Web Designs »
50 Inspirational and Fresh Minimally Designed Web Sites »
50 Creative and Inspirational Personal Portfolio Websites »
50 Inspiring Web Application and Service Web Site Designs »
50 Examples of Effective Uses of Typography Within Web Design »
50 Beautifully Crafted Corporate Ecommerce Web Designs »
50 Creative Examples of Vintage and Retro in Web Design »

50 Creative 404 Pages

South Park Studios

Dilbert Website

Blizzard Entertainment

Future of Web Design London

Popscreen

GDZLLA SMASH PAGE (NOT FOUND)

Carsonified 404

Chris Jennings 404

Twurn

Houston, we have a problem! Abduzeedo

Henrik Hedegaard – WOOPSIE DAISY! Something went wrong!!!

Wufoo Page Not Found

Jamie Huskisson 404

Tele2 404

TattooSales.com – Page Not Found

What the Dickens…?

Suspended Animations

Oops! You bwoke it

YouCastr – Woops!

Acro Media Inc – Dude, we can't find that page!

< scythe.net 404 Error >

Content Not Found : The New Yorker

Frye/Wiles 404 – Whoops

Pattern Tap 404

Limp Fish – file not found

TinSanity 404

LILEKS – uh oh

Page Not Found – d20srd.org

dawdle.com

Blue Daniel 404 File Not Found

CSS Tricks – Nothing found for Thispagedoesntexist

arbitraryconstant – 404 (missing)

Shelfworthy

Laughing Squid – Page not found

VintFalken.com

Springload: Error 404

Error Finding Page

Expansion Broadcast – Page not found

Bits of Magic – PAGE FAULT ERROR #404

Error – GeekSquad

moock.org >> operation failure >> code 404

Open Adventure – 404!

Site Sketch 101

Bi Bakar mısınız? Sayfayı Bulunamadı!

404 – Casino Lemonade

404 › rbardini.com

404: Lost in the aether

ZEITWENDE

webtressdesign.com – OOPS Wrong Turn

The Web Motel – ERROR!

404 Best Practice Resources

404 Best Practices from CSS-Tricks
Tips for Creating an Informative 404 Error Page
Pimp Your 404: Presentation and Functionality from Perishable Press
How To Customise Your 404 Page from Sitepoint
Turning 404 not found random visitors to blog readers from Tech Snacks
404 Page Management Your Grandma Can Use
404s and WordPress Server Load from alexking.org
The Perfect 404 from A List Apart
5 Tips to Make Your 404 Page More Usable from UX Booth
Why You Should Keep an Eye on Your 404 Stats
How to Find and Fix 404 Errors
A Better 404 – Redux from urbanmainframe.com

About the Author

This post has been written by Richie Thimmaiah. You can visit his personal design blog RichWorks, which is brimming with Photoshop tutorials, daily inspirations and all round great resources. You can also follow him on Twitter here: @richbugger

You might also like…

A Showcase of 50 Amazing Personal Blog Web Designs »
50 Creative Examples of Illustrations in Web Design »
50 Professional Web Design Agency Web Sites »
50 Bright and Vibrant Web Designs – Color Inspiration »
50 Impressive Magazine and Newspaper Styled Web Designs »
50 Inspirational and Fresh Minimally Designed Web Sites »
50 Creative and Inspirational Personal Portfolio Websites »
50 Inspiring Web Application and Service Web Site Designs »
50 Examples of Effective Uses of Typography Within Web Design »
50 Beautifully Crafted Corporate Ecommerce Web Designs »
50 Creative Examples of Vintage and Retro in Web Design »

About the Author: Paul Andrew (564 Articles)

Paul Andrew is the editor and founder of Speckyboy Design Magazine. You can follow Speckyboy on Twitter, on Facebook, on Digg or you can subscribe via RSS.

Comments and Reactions

http://sexidesign.com Melody

hahaha I love the south park one!
http://www.musings.it Federica Sibella

Awesome collection! Some of them are really humorous.
Maybe you’ll like this one too:

http://www.albergogiardinetto.it/error404.html
http://www.whitenoisestudios.com Adam Lunn

Ah, what you think of our 404 page?

http://www.whitenoisestudios.com/nafing
http://xtraboy.com Xtraboy Photography

Nice collection. I really love some of this ideas! My 404 Error page is here: http://xtraboy.com

It was included in lists on other sites.
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http://www.xtence.be Xtence

Nice list, the one from apartmenthomeliving (error finding page) is really stiff upper lip, like it, British humour, i like it !
http://nijikokun.com Nijikokun

Nice. I’ve seen the mario one a few times. Mine is creepy i’ve been told. http://nijikokun.com/404/
Vic

You have forgot this one !
http://www.talawa.fr/404
http://deepakkaletha.com Deepak kaletha

nice 404 error page
http://www.feralbytes.com Leisha

These are great! I love the grim reaper surrounded by cute kitties on scythe.net.
http://lava360.com Lava360

i will not mind it at all if your site gave me theses kind of 404 error pages. love to see them :)
http://evolveweb.co.uk Noel

These are great made me chuckle!!

Given me some good ideas.
http://www.biko2.com/ Carloswes

Our 404 error page:

http://biko2.com/404.html

:D
Ramesh

I like Whoops
http://www.aceinfowayindia.com Ajay

Awesome 404 page not found collection! Thanks for sharing.
http://www.rainfall.ro/ Dalibor Vasiljevic

Hey, please check out our: http://www.rainfall.ro/404/

Thanks and keep up the good work :)
http://www.broadbandmix.co.uk Sunny

check out this one as well…
http://www.broadbandmix.co.uk/404 I like the iconography in this website…
Phil Barnhart

I always liked this photographer’s baby-photo 404 page: http://momentsfromtheheart.com/smashing
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Robert

I like this one: http://www.netprofit.de/404.html
http://www.wixiweb.fr Création site internet rouen

I love this 404 page : http://www.wibox.fr/404
http://nickburd.com Nick Burd

This was a great post. I should get to designing a 404Page for my site. :D
http://www.11en1.nl 11EN1

Check out our 404
http://www.11en1.nl/jhdfjsdk
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http://www.redbilby.com.au Mike Chanter

You missed this one:
http://www.redbilby.com.au/test
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http://www.tim-holmes-design.co.uk TimHolmesDesign

Love it…

It is always something I have wanted to make really creative and stand out, but then again, I don’t want to have a 404 or any other error page in the first place :o)

Nice list, some great examples…
http://dj-case.com House Music

Hey!
Please check my 404 page – http://dj-case.com/404
Niubi

These are all fantastic! I’ve been looking for original ones myself since I first saw the DubLi page, but these have just blown me away!
http://www.bestfreewebresources.com/ BBL

nice collection
http://www.rajesharma.com Rajesh

Haha! Southpark is cool!!
http://www.untiedmusic.com Emory Stagmer

I’m pretty proud of mine :)

http://www.untiedmusic.com/notfound.html

Emory Stagmer
Executive Producer, UnTied Music
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http://www.instantfundas.com Kaushik

I think the most creative 404 ever is still this

http://tech.bluesmoon.info/2010/02/missing-kids-on-your-404-page.html
http://www.yusigames.com yusi

southpark is adorable :)) i love those guys.
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Karen Butler

Great list!
BTW. This is a brilliant 404:
http://www.silverpistol.com/404
http://payday-1500.com $1500 Payday

This will certainly make me think about the 404s on our sites. Something I ALWAYS, ALWAYS forget about (bad I know).
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http://www.hybridlava.com/ Alan

great article…..
http://www.mailing-list-email-list.com DB

Nice collection – some great ideas to send to our webguy to create ours!

Great post!
http://www.webgraphicdesigner.me Jennifer Wilke

Great collection!
My 404 error page:
http://www.webgraphicdesigner.me/404.html

:)
http://www.camisetas.info camisetas

Nice! another 404, our error page :)

http://www.camisetas.info/404.php
http://www.divinewrite.com Glenn Murray

Some classics there. Here’s one that takes 404s a step further: http://www.silverpistol.com/error404
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http://ipadinterfaces.com iPad Interfaces

this is really great collection! good job, thanks!
http://www.micropressdesign.com/ Mike

Some really good 404 pages in this Article. Here’s my 404 page. http://www.micropressdesign.com/404
http://www.brunodulcetti.com/blog/ Bruno Dulcetti

Papo de Bar 404 page is very cool

http://www.papodebar.com/404.php
http://www.ursusmedia.co.uk Lucy

Great list. My favourite has to be What the Dickens…?

We went down the elephant in an eggshell route for ours: http://www.ursusmedia.co.uk/404
http://roqstar.net Sean Sr.

Just added one of our own here:

Doh! 404 ERROR PAGE
http://www.s3solutions.com.vn/eng/ Vietnam software outsourcing

These are very creative but I won’t spend too much time and energy to make these because I don’t intend to get my website buggy to display these 404 pages.
http://www.bogdanlazar.com Bogdan Lazar

Great resource! I really liked the Open Adventure one. I think 404 error pages should do more than say the page doesn’t exit. It may very well be your fault this happened, so why not to apologize to the user with a creative page.

Good stuff!

Here’s mine:

404 Error Page – Cry Baby.

Notice the little joke generator at the bottom of the page. Just something to make you smile even if you lost your way on the site. :)
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VfB

Moss by IT Crowd work for online parfumery
http://www.parfemy-elnino.cz/404.html
http://www.unit-mse.co.jp MSE

Hello!
Your site is very cool.

our web site 404
http://www.unit-mse.co.jp/xxx
http://www.seek.fr Fred

Here is mine, hope u gona like it :)
http://www.seek.fr/404/
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http://www.pdqinc.com PDQ

Nice collection! Every 404 page should be a little humorous – you at least need to take the edge off of what just happened to the end user. We recently updated our 404 page after seeing so many others: http://www.pdqinc.com/404.
http://www.eddieforeman.co.uk Eddie Foreman

A great place for 404 inspiration for my own 404 page (http://bit.ly/greMbP)
http://www.hotmail.co.uk Dylan

Hi,

Just added our own at:

http://willoughbystewart.com/404

To help people relax and have a bit of a giggle too!
pjjjnet

Using obama for 404 page
http://imagesbox.com/404
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Don Bledsoe

I’ve been using this one for several years with my hosting accounts … http://aonx.net/404
Igor

Surfer room 404 : http://www.alohaaloha.net/404
Jelle van Lindenhuizen

This is a cool one:

http://adamwhitcroft.com/404

50 Examples of Creative 404 – Page Not Found Pages

Previous parts of the Top 50 Web Design Styles Series

50 Creative 404 Pages

404 Best Practice Resources

About the Author

You might also like…

About the Author: Paul Andrew (564 Articles)

Comments and Reactions

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