Question for you Reader: How often do you use Lorem Ipsum filler text in your mockups?

Last week I wrote about how content comes first when you’re designing a new website or landing page. Today I want to give you some examples of the placeholder content I use in my designs before a draft of the copy is written (spoiler alert: sometimes my placeholder becomes the draft copy!).

But first, a public service announcement about Lorem Ipsum.

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This Latin-looking filler text is often used in wireframes before real copy is available. It does a great job of mimicking real words visually, but it’s no use at all when it comes to making decisions about how effective a design will be. Like we talked about last week, you cannot accurately evaluate the quality of a design without content.

The only, and I mean only time you should be using Lorem Ipsum filler text in your designs is to simulate a piece of long form content like a blog article. So a good rule of thumb is if you find yourself copy and pasting less than 5 paragraphs from a Lorem Ipsum generator site, you're doing something wrong.

How to get placeholder content for your design without resorting to Lorem Ipsum

There are two ways to approach content in your designs before you have final copy that avoid Lorem Ipsum:

1. Write filler text that indicates the content
2. Write your own copy

The first approach is incredibly simple. Here’s an example of it in action in one of my designs:

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Instead of using a string of Lorem Ipsum or just writing “heading” in the h1 spot, I’ve written “Heading about simple editing”.

Now clearly this is still filler copy and no one will mistake it for real copy, but it gives a general sense of what copy will be filling the space eventually. Anyone looking at this design and giving feedback on it will know what this section is about and can evaluate the design with context. They can judge the flow of information and user experience alongside the visual aspects.

The second approach, of making an actual attempt at writing real copy, is something that intimidates many designers. Or maybe consider it “not their job”. But I promise you that improving your copywriting skills will make you a better designer.

I stumbled into writing my own copy for a design by slowly expanding on my placeholder content – making it more detailed and specific – until I reached a point where I just ended up writing a complete paragraph!

I remember so many times earlier in my career where I’d be laying a heading out on a page, seeing that it looked too long to be eye catching and maybe having some ideas for how to change it, but I was afraid of stepping on the toes of the copywriter. It is a valid concern (us designers are always disappointed when a client tries their own hand at editing a design file to fill in some negative space after all...) but if you speak up and handle it well, it can have a really positive impact on your working relationship with the writer.

You have to remember that everyone on the team is working towards the same goals, and want the best result at the end of the day. If you have an idea for a change to a heading that could better serve the end goal of the design, speak up!

I only recently started taking a stab at writing copy in my mockups but it’s been really beneficial to my process with ConvertKit’s lead writer, Dani. We treat the copy I write as a first draft. Dani makes changes as she sees fit, either tweaking or completely rewriting where necessary. But as much of the copy I’d use came from our messaging guide or elsewhere on the site, sometimes she barely had to change a thing!

The potential downside of this approach, and the reason I stick to indicative filler copy in the early stages of a project, is that people can get hung up on critiquing the copy and not give you any useful feedback about the layout. This is why we stick to grey boxes in the wireframing stage of a design: to eliminate distractions and give our stakeholders no other choice but to review the information hierarchy. No imagery for them to comment on, or colours to potentially feel ‘off’ in a certain place. Just the structure. If you’re not super adept at copywriting (and no one expects you to be when it’s a new skill you’re learning), your stakeholders could end up focussed on giving copy feedback rather than judging the overall design.

Whichever option you choose, I hope you can confidently approach your next design project without needing to paste Lorem Ipsum anywhere. We can do better than that as designers, and by writing indicative or draft copy we’ll get a better understanding ourselves of the message communicated on the page. So don’t be afraid to get typing.

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Behind the scenes of Figma design systems

I’m collaborating with the team at Figma on a new series on their channel, Coffee with Charli!

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The videos feature chats with design systems leaders and you’ll get a peek into the ways they use Figma, and what makes their design system unique. The first episode features Chris Pearson from Conde Nast and you’ll get so see the cool ways in which they’ve optimised for efficiency in creating a system that works across allllll of their publications.

New videos will be out weekly so subscribe to the Figma YouTube channel to be notified when they’re uploaded. Figma have been a proud sponsor of my own YouTube channel for a while, so it’s been fun to start working with them on videos for their own channel.

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​Dribbble follow: ​Mowe​

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Mowe is a motion graphics and animation studio run by some friends of mine, and I always love seeing their shots in my Dribbble feed. They work with super unique and interesting illustration styles and color palettes and as a dabbler in motion graphics myself I love seeing how they make visuals move! Follow them for some inspiration.

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We've made it to February! Why does January always feel like it's about 60 days long? I've been going strong on the daily writing habit I decided to start on January 1st, and I hope you've been enjoying reading some of the results of those writing sessions in this newsletter. As always, feel free to reply with any feedback or questions you have about marketing design.

See you next week,

Charli