Lorem Ipsum Dialog Example

I’ll get right to the point. Designers, please stop using Lorem Ipsum placeholder text in your designs!

Sure, I understand why you’d use Lorem Ipsum placeholder text. I’ve been tempted myself: you want to fill in your design and make it look ‘real’. And now the temptation is stronger. Photoshop CS6 has a Lorem Ipsum text generation feature built right in.

However, any sort of placeholder text that’s essentially gibberish shows that you haven’t actually thought through the design fully.

How will you really know how much space text will take if you haven’t come up with real, plausible text? How will you be able to evaluate the balance, layout, spacing, and flow of your design if you don’t know how much text will be displayed in real life user scenarios? What about usability? How will you determine if your design is cluttered, or completely void of information, if you haven’t filled it in real textual data?

You see, the problem with placeholder text is that the designer will always pick just the right amount of text to make the design look good. But when the real text comes in, the design can easily fall apart.

A Designer Has To Be A Writer

I once had a designer work for me that used Lorem Ipsum placeholder text. I understood it was an early design, but I posed the question: “What kind of text goes here? What message is it trying to convey?” The answer I was given: “I am not a copywriter, I am a designer.”

If you think of yourself as a designer, you have to be a writer. At least to get the wording about 90% right, so you can effectively convey your design. An editor can polish off the rough edges, but you are in charge of creation.

Say “no” to Loren Ipsum text placeholder text!