Don't use Lorem Ipsum in your wireframes

• 🍿 2 min. read

According to a long running site used to generate such text:

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. - Lorem Ipsum

I've definitely reached for it in the past for wireframes, but I don't like it any more because:

  • It confuses customers, who focus on it instead of more important things.
  • It's not representative of content size. While it's always the hardest thing to get content from clients, we need to design around content for the best designs.

I much prefer to put some real words like 'This is where some content related to this page will go', or even make up something clearly wrong that's more representative of size.

If you are purely wireframing for layout, then even a few horizontal lines to indicate paragaphs is enough, however nothing beats real content, which is always going to be more representive of what you are trying to achieve in your design.

In the wise words of my friend Tom Kerwin:

I encourage everyone to start with real content.
If it’s UGC, collect real examples from the world
If it’s a landing page, start by writing the copy
If it’s UI copy, start with the conversation between the UI and the user

I encourage everyone to test the words before opening Figma.

Is it easier to draw boxes with lines in? Sure it is. But it’s putting the cart before the horse


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