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← BlogDesignAugust 9, 2026 · 2 min read

Even our 404 page is a pun

How a branded 404 page can keep its joke, return the right HTTP status, and stay out of search results.

404 page is the one place on a site where almost nobody puts real effort — by definition, every visitor there arrived by accident, following a broken link or a typo, and most templates just say "Page Not Found" in the default font and call it handled. Ours says "Not made." instead, split into the same wireframe-outline-versus-solid-gradient treatment the wordmark carries everywhere else on the site.

bothmade.Bothmade.Notmade—theonestatethebrandmarkwasalwaysgoingtoeventuallyneedtosayoutloud.

That's the real not-found.tsx layout, verbatim — same grid backdrop, same font-mono "error 404" kicker, same two-tone treatment on the headline. The only thing swapped out is the browser chrome around it, so you can type whatever nonexistent path you want and watch the page insist it genuinely was never made, which happens to also be exactly true.

Precisely because almost nobody sees it, it's low-stakes enough to take a genuine swing at — no client is reviewing the 404 page in a proposal meeting, so it's one of the few places on a site where a small joke is pure upside. It's also a real (if minor) signal: a studio that bothered to make its own error page on-brand is a studio that probably didn't skip the boring parts of your project either.

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