If I asked you to replace a dummy text with a catchy title, I am sure you would come up with a good one, but if I asked you to write a catchy title of as much length as you wish, I am sure you would come up with a brilliant one. That is what Lorem Ipsum does to great content. It is hard for writers to fill the shoes of these dreaded random Greek words.
Is dummy text making you look like a dummy?
The dummy text means you no harm, in fact, it started as a way to aid the viewer in understanding how the design will look after the actual text is placed. But recently, designers write the dummy text first and the writers are forced to fill in the blanks which ends up being a strategic process rather than a creative process.
Dummy text was meant to fill the gaps for the actual text and not the other way round. At some places, it is necessary to restrict the length of the text due to design constraints but at other places, creativity shouldn’t be limited by Lorem Ipsum Blah Blah Amet.
Why should you lose Lorem Ipsum?
Better content:
Content is king and good designs and layouts are nothing without good content. Your users love your website and app because of great content which is complemented with great design. Using Lorem Ipsum forces the copywriter to fill the space with paragraphs of useless blabbering that could otherwise be said easily in one sentence. It also makes the writers restrict their words to a minimum number where they need that one extra sentence to make sense of what they are trying to say.
Better UI UX copy:
Better UI UX copy:If you are a UI UX designer, there is no better time to say goodbye to dummy text than right now. Lorem Ipsum does more harm to a UI UX designer than to anybody else. When you start replacing the Lorem with Menu and the Ipsum with Go back, you will notice that you are not just helping yourself but all the other people in your team who are going to use that design to make decisions. You don’t need to put a great copy in the empty spaces, just write whatever seems natural to you. This will not just help the fellow designers but also the fellow copywriters to write something similar and related (which is the principle point of UI UX copy) rather than writing something from scratch.
Better website copy:
Decide the content for your website first and then move towards design to complement it. Although you don’t need to decide on the final copy, a rough skeleton would really help the developer and the designer to make the design that best suits the content. In some special cases, where you have a crazy design idea for your website, especially if you are a graphic design agency, it is okay to start with the design first. But what is not okay is to leave the writing process for the last. If nothing, at least include the writer in the design process. This way, you can come up with a design mockup which is filled with suitable, relatable text rather than meaningless Greek words.
Really, nothing ruins great content like Lorem Ipsum. So remember, to always start with rough words that can be transformed into even better words rather than trying to transform words you don’t even know the meaning of.
