A graphic for the 404 error page worthy of a cartographer's website.
Today, I saw that the website designer I use for this website allows me to define a 404 error page. Of course, I could not just write "Oups! Something went wrong." It needed to show something to do with maps. And a small fantasy map it turned out to be.
Transparent Version
However, I eventually used a version with a transparent background, as this creates less clear image boundaries. This way, the graphic looks more like a part of the website rather than a featured image. To see how it looks on white background, click on the image.
Try it out and adjust the URL in your browser with anything arbitrary after katharina.henggeler.net/. For example: https://katharina.henggeler.net/not-there.
Design Considerations
The fun part about this small map was that I could finally use all the 'negatively' connotated map brushes in the photoshop brush sets I own, such as the sinking ship, the thunderstorm cloud, or a north arrow that points completely wayward. However, I didn't put them there arbitrarily; there were some thoughts behind them.
As towns often are the most important orientation features, the two bits of the standard error message—'Oh Snap' and 'Page Not Found'—were put down as town names. 'Oh Snap' doesn't help much; it just indicates the bad news that we're at a dead-end. 'Page Not Found' at least offers a small indication of what went wrong.
The three islands represent the most obvious actions to take, if one receives a 404 error: First, one might Retry to access the URL. Even though we know it will likely not work, we can still pray, cross our fingers, or do whatever ritual and hit the reload button. Once we realise this doesn't work, we can Return to our previous location, hoping that a mistake was made somwehere. If that wasn't the case, we can make an effort to Rethink and try to figure out another way forward.
Credits
The graphic was created using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. For the drawings, I used the Map Brushes Set by Jey33; the wave pattern is based upon pannawish's Japanese Swirl Wave Seamless Pattern.
