Designing the page that’s not supposed to be seen

Our fabulous web team recently launched a new website. They needed something pretty and different for their 404 page, the page that all things going well should never be seen by site visitors. I was chuffed to be invited to design it for them and went away to illustrate some cute 404 pages.

My brief was very open so I was free to apply my creativity. I toyed around with a few ideas wanting something with either some humour or a Melbourne Water feel, or even both. I gave them four different designs to choose from and the team voted on the one they liked best.

The team liked this one because it had a distinct Melbourne Water theme focusing on one of our fantastic programs, the Frog Census. They also liked the frog’s big eyes which they felt showed the frog looked really sorry that they didn’t find what they were looking for. They even tied the frog into our internal launch by offering a Freddo frog for any staff member who found the 404 page and reported what link was broken. Cute!

I’m not going to share two of the other designs because the team is going to hold on to them and perhaps use them for the page at a later date. What I will share is one design that didn’t make it. This was the first idea I thought of and really got the ball rolling for the other ideas. It didn’t make the cut because it missed the Melbourne Water theme that the other designs had. I still really like it, but agree that it wasn’t right for the site.

I hope to be able to share the other designs with you in good time if and when they are featured on the site. This was a fun little project!