So Lorem Ipsum is bad (not necessarily)

There's lot of hate out there for a text that amounts to little more than garbled words in an old language.
The villagers are out there with a vengeance to get that Frankenstein, wielding torches and pitchforks,
wanting to tar and feather it at the least, running it out of town in shame.

One of the villagers, Kristina Halvorson from Adaptive Path, holds steadfastly to the notion that design
can’t be tested without real content:

I’ve heard the argument that “lorem ipsum” is effective in wireframing or design because it helps people
focus on the actual layout, or color scheme, or whatever. What kills me here is that we’re talking about
creating a user experience that will (whether we like it or not) be DRIVEN by words. The entire structure
of the page or app flow is FOR THE WORDS.

If that's what you think how bout the other way around? How can you evaluate content without design?
No typography, no colors, no layout, no styles, all those things that convey the important signals that go
beyond the mere textual, hierarchies of information, weight, emphasis, oblique stresses, priorities, all
those subtle cues that also have visual and emotional appeal to the reader. Rigid proponents of content
strategy may shun the use of dummy copy but then designers might want to ask them to provide style
sheets with the copy decks they supply that are in tune with the design direction they require.

Or else, an alternative route: set checkpoints, networks, processes, junctions between content and
layout. Depending on the state of affairs it may be fine to concentrate either on design or content,
reversing gears when needed.

Or maybe not. How about this: build in appropriate intersections and checkpoints between design and
content. Accept that it’s sometimes okay to focus just on the content or just on the design.

Luke Wroblewski, currently a Product Director at Google, holds that fake data can break down in real life:

Using dummy content or fake information in the Web design process can result in products with
unrealistic assumptions and potentially serious design flaws. A seemingly elegant design can quickly
begin to bloat with unexpected content or break under the weight of actual activity. Fake data can
ensure a nice looking layout but it doesn’t reflect what a living, breathing application must endure. Real
data does.

Websites in professional use templating systems. Commercial publishing platforms and content
management systems ensure that you can show different text, different data using the same template.
When it's about controlling hundreds of articles, product pages for web shops, or user profiles in social
networks, all of them potentially with different sizes, formats, rules for differing elements things can
break, designs agreed upon can have unintended consequences and look much different than expected.