Lorem Ipsum
Lorem Ipsum is a series of random words similar to Latin which has been traditionally used as placeholder text in graphic design. Is it better to design websites with this, or relevant content?
I’ve been designing with Lorem Ipsum for most of my graphics career but lately I’ve been wondering if I’m doing the right thing. The main advantage of Lorem Ipsum that I hear all the time is:
“It focuses the attention on the overall design, rather than individual text”
The idea here is that when presenting to clients they’ll see the text as a shape and look at it in context with the layout as a whole, rather than focusing on a sentence. This seems quite logical, but I disagree.
Most of my client presentations immediately start with the client asking “Why is it in Latin?” or a similar statement (normally as a joke). The point is that people will immediately focus on the text. It is in our nature to communicate. The client, and more importantly the end users are always going to see the text first. We should be designing with this in mind rather than ignoring the fact.
Because we are telling clients the filler text is not important we, as designers could also ignore it. When designing with Lorem Ipsum I’ve found myself chopping it up to fit my design, e.g. if the text is too long for my 200 pixel menu, I’ll chop a few words off. When the text is meaningless it becomes unimportant. It’s very easy to forget that real text is going to eventually replace the filler, and become the hero of the whole website.
The big problem with using Lorem Ipsum is that it doesn’t give a proper sense or provoke thoughts as to what will eventually replace it. If we are persuading clients to ignore the text and look at the whole layout they will, and so will we. This results in the clients sending over website copy that is far too long and doesn’t fit the design. This is ultimately the designer’s problem. By using real copy during the design presentation we can discuss what text is necessary and how it will affect the design and layout.
One question I always ask clients is “Do you feel this design provides adequate space for the text, pages, and content needed?” It seems silly asking this if I’ve persuaded them to ignore the filler copy and think purely in terms of layout.
For these reasons I’ve decided to get rid of Lorem Ipsum in all client presentations - or at least as much as I can. Only long paragraphs of body copy I see as acceptable places to use filler. And yes, clients will look at the text first, just like they’ll look at Lorem Ipsum first, but now they’re going to see that I care about typography - and more importantly their business.