||||Liesl Barrell

Future Shop 404: Tearing Apart the Fabric of the Universe

I have to say, I really do appreciate a good 404 page (“Page Not Found” messages that are usually lame, but are occasionally very awesome…) It turns a mild nuisance into an Easter egg: it’s like  uncovering a little bundle of buried treasure on your quest for the Contact page (or whatever has moved/is missing/etc.) It makes me happy to stumble across one of these gems, as I did during lunch, when I landed on this cute Future Shop error page.

So I looked up some classic and creative 404s, and while I can see how an imaginative Page Not Found could occasionally be the result of rogue programming, the best ones are creative, thought-provoking and on-message as a representation of a brand, whether personal or corporate (South Park’s “Son of a Bitch! Where’s My Page?” and the Future Shop 404 being good examples).

But I have to admit, I can’t think of 404s anymore without getting a mental image of a firetruck, thanks to the folks at Very Demotivational. In fact, the other day I saw a 405 firetruck in downtown Montreal, and I was relieved to know the fire that was called in had a +1 chance of being found.