How to Get the Japandi Look in a Rental

Lorem ipsum was popularized in the 1960s with Letraset’s dry-transfer sheets, and later entered the digital world via Aldus PageMaker.

Word processing software
Word processing software
Digital Ipsum
The decade that brought us Star Trek and Doctor Who also resurrected Cicero—or at least what used to be Cicero—in an attempt to make the days before computerized design a little less painstaking.

The French lettering company Letraset manufactured a set of dry-transfer sheets which included the lorem ipsum filler text in a variety of fonts, sizes, and layouts. These sheets of lettering could be rubbed on anywhere and were quickly adopted by graphic artists, printers, architects, and advertisers for their professional look and ease of use.

Aldus Corporation, which later merged with Adobe Systems, ushered lorem ipsum into the information age with its desktop publishing software Aldus PageMaker. The program came bundled with lorem ipsum dummy text for laying out page content, and other word processors like Microsoft Word followed suit. More recently the growth of web design has helped proliferate lorem ipsum across the internet as a placeholder for future text—and in some cases the final content (this is why we proofread, kids).

Controversy in the Design World
Some claim lorem ipsum threatens to promote design over content, while others defend its value in the process of planning.

Star Wars lorem ipsum
Star Wars lorem ipsum
Design or (Dis)content
Among design professionals, there’s a bit of controversy surrounding the filler text. Controversy, as in Death to Lorem Ipsum.

The strength of lorem ipsum is its weakness: it doesn’t communicate. To some, designing a website around placeholder text is unacceptable, akin to sewing a custom suit without taking measurements. Kristina Halvorson notes:

“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.”

Lorem ipsum is so ubiquitous because it is so versatile. Select how many paragraphs you want, copy, paste, and break the lines wherever it is convenient. Real copy doesn’t work that way.As front-end developer Kyle Fiedler put it:

“When you are designing with Lorem Ipsum, you diminish the importance of the copy by lowering it to the same level as any other visual element. The text simply becomes another supporting role, serving to make other aspects more aesthetic. Instead of your design enhancing the meaning of the content, your content is enhancing your design.”

But despite zealous cries for the demise of lorem ipsum, others, such as Karen McGrane, offer appeals for moderation:

“Lorem Ipsum doesn’t exist because people think the content is meaningless window dressing, only there to be decorated by designers who can’t be bothered to read. Lorem Ipsum exists because words are powerful. If you fill up your page with draft copy about your client’s business, they will read it. They will comment on it. They will be inexorably drawn to it. Presented the wrong way, draft copy can send your design review off the rails.”

And that’s why the designers at Letraset and James Mosley might have scrambled a passage of Cicero; they wanted people to focus on the fonts, to imagine their own content on the pages. They wanted people to see, and to get them to see they had to keep them from reading.

When to Use Lorem Ipsum
Generally, lorem ipsum is best suited to keeping templates from looking bare or minimizing the distractions of draft copy.

Lorem ipsum website
Lorem ipsum website
Form Over Function
So when is it okay to use lorem ipsum? First, lorem ipsum works well for staging. It’s like the props in a furniture store—filler text makes it look like someone is home. The same WordPress template might eventually be home to a fitness blog, a photography website, or the online journal of a cupcake fanatic. Lorem ipsum helps them imagine what the lived-in website might look like.

Second, use lorem ipsum if you think the placeholder text will be too distracting. For specific projects, collaboration between copywriters and designers may be best, however, like Karen McGrane said, draft copy has a way of turning any meeting about layout decisions into a discussion about word choice. So don’t be afraid to use lorem ipsum to keep everyone focused.

One word of caution: make sure your client knows that lorem ipsum is filler text. You don’t want them wondering why you filled their website with a foreign language, and you certainly don’t want anyone prematurely publishing it.

Lorem Ipsum All the Things
Coming full circle, the internet’s remixing of the now infamous lorem ipsum passage has officially elevated it to pop culture status.

Bacon ipsum generator
Bacon ipsum generator
Because it’s the Internet
There was that time artists at Sequence opted to hand-Sharpie the lorem ipsum passage on a line of paper bags they designed for Chipotle—the result being a mixture of avant-garde, inside joke, and Sharpie-stained tables. Those with an eye for detail may have caught a tribute to the classic text in an episode of Mad Men (S6E1 around 1:18:55 for anyone that didn’t). And here is a lorem ipsum tattoo.Of course, we’d be remiss not to include the veritable cadre of lorem ipsum knock offs featuring:

Bacon Ipsum – Served all day. “Bacon ipsum dolor amet chicken turducken spare ribs.”

Hipster Ipsum – In case you’re in need of a “shoreditch direct trade four dollar toast copper mug.”

Legal Ipsum – Fully unlicensed legalese for those times you don’t want to pay $400/hr.

Not to mention, Cupcake Ipsum, Bob Ross Ipsum (“happy little clouds”), and the furry Cat Ipsum. And in case that’s not enough, check out our very own Ultimate List of Lorem Ipsum Generators.So there you have it. Lorem ipsum: the nonsense words unable to fully escape meaning.

Original Source Text
Below are the original Latin passages from which Lorem Ipsum was derived, paired with their 1914 translations by H. Rackham.

Cicero’s De finibus opening page
Cicero’s De finibus opening page
Section 1.10.32 of Cicero’s “De finibus bonorum et malorum”
Original Latin text:

“Sed ut perspiciatis, unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam eaque ipsa, quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt, explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem, quia voluptas sit, aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos, qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt, neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum, quia dolor sit amet consectetur adipisci[ng] velit, sed quia non numquam [do] eius modi tempora inci[di]dunt, ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit, qui in ea voluptate velit esse, quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum, qui dolorem eum fugiat, quo voluptas nulla pariatur?”