Death to Lorem Ipsum – The story behind our app, Lorem Ipsum Tool
Hello. We are @teamkureno and we build apps. We aren’t here to look for fame. We want to help people. All the web applications we built have solved our pains and we want to build more coz heck, we have a lot of pain to cure.
And today, the spotlight is on an app that gets us all worked up, our very own Lorem Ipsum Tool
So what does the app do?
It generates legit, dummy content for our web design & development projects. Essentially, so that we DON’T have to use Lorem Ipsum.
We are comically very passionate about it.
You know how from the outside looking in, people ask “Why so serious?” Well, that’s how we are because web design is personal.
” We think lorem ipsum is bad for your web design and should be rid off forever. “
So what exactly is Lorem Ipsum?
It is filler text that shares some characteristics of a real written text, but is totally incomprehensible.
Here’s an example of Lorem Ipsum
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
What’s the problem with Lorem Ipsum?
Truth is, there is nothing wrong with Lorem Ipsum itself
But, the most alarming problem with using Lorem Ipsum is that it is meaningless. The texts don’t mean anything therefore does not communicate any message. By using Lorem Ipsum as your filler texts during development, you may confuse clients and project stakeholders.
In a web project, it’s best to have content ready prior to designing your website. In circumstances that you can’t, use readable mockup text that is just a Google search away or now, you can use our Lorem Ipsum Tool
Now why is using legit content important during development?
Everyone in Kureno shares the same pain and views about using meaningless filler text for our projects.
Lets look at some views of from our team and friends.
- @nadsulaiman is our UI Designer at @teamkureno, also Creative Director at @bitter_coffee, she says “No excuses. I will always use readable content when I design anything. You need readable content so you can deliver a design that’s most effective in communicating the content. You’ll also feel more inspired when designing with readable content”
- @iwani is our Band Manager at @teamkureno, also Web Developer at @bitter_coffee. She bites “I completely avoid using Lorem Ipsum or any unreadable filler text in my mockup designs or HTML templates. You’ll risk confusing clients and your teammates as well. I’ve worked with CSS designers and backend developers who use unreadable texts like test123, abcabcaabc and the likes of that – content is king is another story, but the point is – don’t do your work half-heartedly”
- @eizil is our Lead Developer at @teamkureno, also a professional freelance developer, he echoes “I wish all my clients would provide me with mock content if not real before starting any project. During system testing, I prefer to use readable content to avoid confusion amongst my teammates and clients”
- @_mfields is a WordPress developer and runs a blog that focuses on WordPress theme and plugin development, amongst many. He says “IMO Lorem Ipsum is no good to show to clients unless you want a 5min discussion on why their project is in a made up language.”
If you don’t agree with me yet,
Some of my favourite points from Lorem Ipsum is Killing Your Designs by @kylefiedler on @DesignInformer
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.
By adding Lorem Ipsum to the design you are essentially dressing your king before you know his size.
The point I tried to make is that you and your clients need to be thinking, understanding and gathering content before the design. Using Lorem Ipsum is a way to half-heartedly go about the most important part of your site.
Wouldn’t this be embarrassing if it happened to you?
Mad props to @mkjones for tweeting me a screenshot. Check it out here
Get involved
If you’re not on it yet, get on Twitter today and follow us at @teamkureno – we are gathering views from across the websphere about using Lorem Ipsum as filler texts on.
Send in your tweets here!
For utmost experience, we have included a custom tweet box below. All you have to do is Connect with Twitter first before tweeting.
Web designers & developers, share with us your views. Is Lorem Ipsum good or bad for your designs? Include #lipsumtool in your tweet
If you need more than 140 chars, feel free to leave us a comment below
Subscribe to our e-mail alerts
Posted on Monday, May 31st, 2010 at 4:53 pm and is filed under things@Kureno. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
June 1st, 2010 at 10:11 am
“…5min discussion on why their project is in a made up language” etc.
Dunno why it takes 5 minutes to say “It’s dummy text, used to help you focus on the stage we’re at in the design process – if it was real text, you might be more interested in correcting what it says than what it looks like. That comes in the next stage.” I’ve never needed any more explanation than that, if you don’t count occasionally having to give that explanation a couple of meetings in a row.
As for going straight to real text, sheesh, good luck trying to get through that mountain of ‘can-you-just’s that have popped up 5 minutes before the deadline… you know, all those design tweaks that they missed because they were playing with content.
I realise that there are pros and cons to both approaches, but take it from someone with a background in psychology – the client’s need for input/control will start with the lowest-hanging fruit that you offer, and how far it continues after that has been plucked is wildly variable. Text has a magical property – we read it and notice what it says even when we’re trying not to. We have an educational system that trains our children to do that, over anything else, for over 10 years of their lives. If you don’t use dummy text, it’ll be the content of that text that is the lowest-hanging fruit 9 times out of 10. If that’s their input for the time being, prepare for the deadline rush when their excitement is inevitably piqued again.
I chart every project I ever take, in order to constantly correct my workflow process. Part of that is charting deviations from the plan, their scale of interruption and where they occur. When I swapped to Lipsum, the difference was dramatic – instead of many peaks of interruption building in intensity as the deadline loomed, there was a nice, even spread of much fewer deviations.
Here’s a counter-anecdote in advance (psychology again
). I’ve had clients tell me that they hate the look or pallette of a mockup *as an afterthought* at the end of 3 or 4 paragraphs of text changes, on more occasions than I care to remember. Trying to elicit more details is harder too, because they want to see their changes happen before they invest more effort into thinking about more changes.
TL;DR: Started using Lipsum, deadline stress consistently halved. As always: If you doubt, test it out.
June 1st, 2010 at 2:10 pm
I’m going to say this quickly:
1. Stop making useless tool
2. You don’t understand Lorem Ipsum
You are just straight wrong. Btw, don’t spam YCombinator with crappy stuff.
And wth is kureno? What ever.
June 1st, 2010 at 2:48 pm
ghol’s explanation made perfect sense to me. While I’m shamed to admit that I’ve left Lipsum text on certain pages after a site had been pushed to a production environment, it’s only happened that one time. I’m very careful in making sure all Lipsum text has been replaced by the time a site goes live.
However, by replacing Lipsum with readable content means that it will be harder to identify the sections of content that are not production ready before a site goes live. Which will probably lead to less than desirable content accidentally being left on pages for longer periods of time than some random Lipsum text would have been. Simply because the readable text will blend in more than the ugly greek.
Lastly, going over content changes before design or UI has even been discussed/agreed upon is ridiculous.
June 1st, 2010 at 4:43 pm
When you find a client that will deliver the content of every page to you before you even start designing, let me know. I’ll need to see it to believe it.
June 2nd, 2010 at 11:00 am
#ghol – It’s happened to me more than once, that’s why I commented as such and why I also never show a client a project with Lorem Ipsum text. Why add yet another thing that will steer the conversation off course? IMO – it would be better to use a language familiar to the client. But that’s just me I guess?
#James – This is something I would like to see as well.
June 2nd, 2010 at 11:04 am
#James #Michael
Fortunately, we’ve had 3 clients on @bitter_coffee that prepared their content prior to awarding the website project to us. Must have been some crazy luck!
The most important thing out of this whole issue is we should try and give priority to the content prior to starting the project.
I agree with some of the opposing comments from HN and this blog post, lipsum can be very useful under some circumstances