Stop using Lorem Ipsum!
Latin placeholder text aka Lorem Ipsum isn't just a nuisance. Web copywriter John McGarvey argues that it's a massive obstacle to building truly great online experiences, explains what kind of problems it causes and how you, too, can stop using it
If you’re a web designer, you’ll be familiar with Lorem Ipsum. There’s a good chance you’ll have used it at work today. You might even be a fan of the nonsense Latin placeholder text, chuckling away at imitators and parodies like gangsta ipsum, bacon ipsum and even Yorkshire ipsum.
If so, I hope you’ve had your fun, because the joke’s over. Lorem Ipsum is slowly destroying web design, and so it has to die. Let me explain...
A terrible substitute for what matters
Whoever started using Lorem Ipsum in web design did so for a reason. It does a good job of filling gaps on mockups, without being distracting like unfinished content. In short, it helps people focus on how your designs look, rather than what they say.
Maybe that was okay when the web was simple, when flat mockups turned into flat web pages and the idea of a good user experience was having a hit counter to show how popular your site was. But things are different now.
Lorem Ipsum causes far more problems than it solves. It’s a terrible substitute for the thing that matters most about great websites: the right content.
How can your client or boss possibly sign off on a web page if it doesn’t contain meaningful content? Sure, they can give a thumbs up if it looks good, but that’s very different to approving a design that works well and does what it needs to.
The wider message that Lorem Ipsum sends out is even more damaging. Every time you use it in a mockup or wireframe, you reinforce the idea that content is secondary. That it doesn’t matter. That you can just whip something up and drop it in at the last minute, and everything will be fine.
It’s no way to create great websites.
Content is web design
What goes on a web page and the way that page is designed are not two separate things. They’re inextricably bound up in each other. Considering one in isolation is harder than trying to separate a web designer from a brand new Macbook Pro.
Great websites are a marriage between amazing content and inspiring design. You have to create the two together. If you don’t, you might still get it right, but you probably won’t. The most common result is a beautiful yet impractical website.
Web designers are kidding themselves if they think they can do their best work without thinking about content from the start. It’s not so much that content is king, but more that content is web design. One won’t work without the other. What your site says is forever linked to the way it looks and how it functions.
So, Latin placeholder text isn’t just a simple nuisance. It’s a plague on web design, a massive obstacle to building truly great online experiences. There’s no need for it in a world where content goes right to the heart of every successful website.
Just stop using it, ok?
Killing Lorem Ipsum doesn’t need to be a huge job. It can be as simple as not using it any more. So, next time you’re tempted to reach for some handy placeholder nonsense text, stop and consider the alternatives.
If you have the budget, you can bring in a professional writer. Sit down together at the start of the project and keep working closely together. Base yourselves in the same office, talk on the phone regularly, keep an open channel on Skype ... however you do it, your aim is to match design with content for every single element of the site.
If you don’t have the luxury of being able to pay a writer, you might have to get creative. Find someone in your company who can write, create the content yourself or ask your client for help. In truth, almost anything is better than Latin nonsense, as long as it gives you some idea of how the page will work and what people should click on.
Together we can destroy Lorem Ipsum and create better websites. Who’s with me?
57 comments
Comment: 1
http://37signals.com/svn/archives/001083.php
That was in 2005... so if it's destroying web design then it's doing it incredibly slowly!
Comment: 2
Ideally the copy for a website should be written before the design starts, but we know that unfortunately this often isn't the case. We also know that not everyone has the time or budget to write some content themselves so they can see how it will look in the design, which is why we have created this site.
It essentially is still dummy text, but it's dummy text that has the look and feel of the type of text that will be in the final site, taking into consideration relevant punctuation, symbols, numbers etc.
Sorry if this comes across as a promo, but I thought those who have commented might be interested and want to take a look.
Comment: 3
Comment: 4
I am a web developer, not a content creator. My job is to make sure any content within a certain set of unique standards will look good, not to make actual content.
Why do we use Lorem Ipsum? Because it's withstood the test of time. It's used because it works and works well. It looks a hell of a lot better then some templates and designs my clients have shown me from previous developers with "Content goes here... blah blah blah" as the text placeholder. Lorem ipsum can provide the same sort of flow that actual content would provide, without having to waste time making fake content that will be deleted in the future anyways.
Let the business handle the content, from their actual content people. My job is design and development. Nothing less, nothing more.
Comment: 5
Many clients don't understand the importance of keywords and focus on design thinking that will be enough to sell the visitor. Providing those clients with a mockup with filler lorem-ipsum text helps them understand better how much text will be required and hopefully at that point the designer will explain to them the importance of content and what they need to provide to replace that text. I think using lorem-ipsum in the first few mock-ups is great for about 80% of the clients out there so they have a better understanding of what they need to provide the designer.
Instead of completely stop using it, we need to communicate better with the clients and educate them more about web content. I'm all for getting rid of lorem-ipsum, just not anytime soon... most people just aren't ready for that yet.
Comment: 6
Comment: 7
It's rather insulting to the intelligence to suppose that because we might use Lorem Ipsum while awaiting the final content that we are somehow devaluing the written word. Anyone with an iota of common sense can appreciate that the tone that we strike in the text of a website is equally as important as the design that surrounds it; and in an ideal world (from our point of view) we'd be presented with the text for the website at the outset. In real life, our clients have other tasks to balance, and we have to find ways of working around that. Personally I don't think that using some dummy placeholder text until the final content is ready is a mortal sin; and in many cases I don't see a viable alternative.
When I'm experimenting with designs I do sometimes use the text of a copyright free text from Project Gutenberg to gauge readability, but this is probably not something I'd do with a website that I was intending to show to a client for approval - Lorem Ipsum is well known and neutral. My taste in reading material often isn't.