What Website Designers in Vancouver Need to Know About 404 Errors

Posted by: Jose Uzcategui on 7/15/2010 6:42:47 PM

In any web design project, even after the ideas and overall style have been approved and laid out, there are pages where you can be more creative than others.

In our experience clients are more permissive of creative ideas in the site’s 404 Error Page. And this is pretty common, not only to our laid-back Vancouver clients.

Smashing Magazine put together a great compilation of original 404 Pages. In this post the author makes recommendations, all very valid, about getting an original 404 Error Page. One type of original 404 they decided not to mention, however, was video.

I went out for an Internet stroll and was gladly surprised by a mountain of ideas – some pretty cool and some not. Personally, I would be hesitant to recommend a video as a 404 Page because it's probably a page you don't want your visitor to spend any significant amount of time or patience for a video.

I didn't find any videos I would recommend. 404 Pages, like the rest of the site, have to have the same look, feel and message reinforcement than the rest of the site.

Having said that, here are some 404 Page videos I found entertaining:

404 Page stop motion video. If forced, I would use something like this:

Alien Looking 404 Creature. I like this concept - not the creature. Something not too distracting and, in a way, it doesn't matter if I pay attention to it or not.

Funky music with lyrics. Not bad, not bad:

Stereotypical Japanese girls... This video wins some kind of special mention:

This one reminds me of Predator or an action movie: