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

though he or her can't quite put a finger on it is worse.

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

get things back on track.

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.

Lorem Ipsum: translation

The Latin scholar H. Rackham translated the above in 1914:

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of

denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account

of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the

master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself,

because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure

rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone

who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain,

 but occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some

great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical

exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find

fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences,

or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so

beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by

desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and

equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is

the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly

simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is

untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every

pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and

owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that

pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore

always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to

secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.

Lorem Ipsum: variants and technical information

In 1985 Aldus Corporation launched its first desktop

publishing program Aldus PageMaker for Apple Macintosh computers, released in 1987

for PCs running Windows 1.0. Both contained the variant lorem ipsum most common

today. Laura Perry, then art director with Aldus, modified prior versions of Lorem

Ipsum text from typographical specimens; in the 1960s and 1970s it appeared often in

lettering catalogs by Letraset. Anecdotal evidence has it that Letraset used Lorem
ipsum already from 1970 onwards, eg. for grids (page layouts) for ad agencies. Many

early desktop publishing programs, eg. Adobe PageMaker, used it to create template.

Most text editors like MS Word or Lotus Notes generate random lorem text when

needed, either as pre-installed module or plug-in to be added. Word selection or

sequence don't necessarily match the original, which is intended to add variety.

Presentation software like Keynote or Pages use it as a samples for screenplay layout.

Content management software as Joomla, Drupal, Mambo, PHP-Nuke, WordPress, or

Movable Type offer Lorem Ipsum plug-ins with the same functionality.