Professional Documents
Culture Documents
foods, the paint you may slap on your face to impress the new boss is your business.
But what about your daily bread? Design comps, layouts, wireframes—will your clients
accept that you go about things the facile way? Authorities in our business will tell in no
uncertain terms that Lorem Ipsum is that huge, huge no no to forswear forever. Not so
fast, I'd say, there are some redeeming factors in favor of greeking text, as its use is
You begin with a text, you sculpt information, you chisel away what's not needed, you
come to the point, make things clear, add value, you're a content person, you like
words. Design is no afterthought, far from it, but it comes in a deserved second.
Anyway, you still use Lorem Ipsum and rightly so, as it will always have a place in the
web workers toolbox, as things happen, not always the way you like it, not always in
the preferred order. Even if your less into design and more into content strategy you
may find some redeeming value with, wait for it, dummy copy, no less.
Consider this: You made all the required mock ups for commissioned layout, got all the
approvals, built a tested code base or had them built, you decided on a content
management system, got a license for it or adapted open source software for your
client's needs. Then the question arises: where's the content? Not there yet? That's not
so bad, there's dummy copy to the rescue. But worse, what if the fish doesn't fit in the
can, the foot's to big for the boot? Or to small? To short sentences, to many headings,
images too large for the proposed design, or too small, or they fit in but it looks iffy for
reasons the folks in the meeting can't quite tell right now, but they're unhappy,
somehow. A client that's unhappy for a reason is a problem, a client that's unhappy
But. A big but: Lorem Ipsum is not t the root of the problem, it just shows what's going
wrong. Chances are there wasn't collaboration, communication, and checkpoints, there
wasn't a process agreed upon or specified with the granularity required. It's content
strategy gone awry right from the start. Forswearing the use of Lorem Ipsum wouldn't
have helped, won't help now. It's like saying you're a bad designer, use less bold text,
don't use italics in every other paragraph. True enough, but that's not all that it takes to
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
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
content and layout. Depending on the state of affairs it may be fine to concentrate
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
Luke Wroblewski, currently a Product Director at Google, holds that fake data can break
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
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.
This is quite a problem to solve, but just doing without greeking text won't fix it. Using
test items of real content and data in designs will help, but there's no guarantee that
every oddity will be found and corrected. Do you want to be sure? Then a prototype or
beta site with real content published from the real CMS is needed—but you’re not going
Lorem Ipsum actually is usefull in the design stage as it focuses our attention on places
where the content is a dynamic block coming from the CMS (unlike static content
elements that will always stay the same.) Blocks of Lorem Ipsum with a character count
range provide a obvious reminder to check and re-check that the design and the content
Kyle Fiedler from the Design Informer feels that distracting copy is your fault:
If the copy becomes distracting in the design then you are doing something wrong or they
are discussing copy changes. It might be a bit annoying but you could tell them that that
discussion would be best suited for another time. At worst the discussion is at least
working towards the final goal of your site where questions about lorem ipsum don’t.
Summing up, if the copy is diverting attention from the design it’s because it’s
not up to task.
Typographers of yore didn't come up with the concept of dummy copy because people
designers who can’t be bothered to read. Lorem Ipsum is needed because words matter,
a lot. Just fill up a page with draft copy about the client’s business and they will actually
read it and comment on it. They will be drawn to it, fiercely. Do it the wrong way and
Asking the client to pay no attention Lorem Ipsum isn't hard as it doesn’t make sense in
the first place, that will limit any initial interest soon enough. Try telling a client to
ignore draft copy however, and you're up to something you can't win. Whenever draft
problems. If you go about content strategy the wrong way, fix that problem.