Use Real Content When Designing
For the longest time I’ve been used to using lorem ipsum when working on new designs in photoshop. It was always the quick and easy way to see what content actually looks like in a design. As of lately, this has method has given me a false sense of how to execute a new design.
Working with real content (if possible) while designing mockups in photoshop gives you a very accurate look at how the content will look once a site is on the web. It helps you gauge how your layout needs to be coded, whether that be widths, heights, margins, etc. It also effects the type of wording you plan on using when designing the user interface, especially for web applications.
“Using lorem ipsum dolor reduces text-based content to a visual design element (a “shape” of text) instead of valuable information someone is going to have to enter and/or read.” via
Using real content can also help answer questions that clients may have when seeing these mockups before anything is coded. You want to give clients the most authentic view of what their site is going to look like. The content is the most important part of any website, so make sure the client sees that.
Of course, it’s not always possible to have that actual content when it’s time to design the site. It can definitely be a hassle trying to gather the content. But when it’s available, the only way to make sure that it’s web-ready, is to get it in a mockup, and go from there.
4 Comments
I think that’s hard to use the right content instead “Lorem ipsum”, because we never, or almost, have it on our hands to use.
When you presents the mockup to the client, you have to concentrate only on layout. You have to create a layout think on flexibility to the content, without care about the “fixed” text.
Carlos, I agree that sometimes it’s hard to have your hands on the real content. It’s a little easier if you have existing copy (from an old site) to work with to at least have an idea on the type of content.
Hey J,
I struggle with this all the time. Many times in presentation meetings it comes down to “Thats just Greeking… It will be real text and will look way different”. Which is probably a bad thing I’d imagine. I just use Lipsum if I don’t have content, and if I do, I use real content.
I agree but Carlos already said, having the content already while you are designing is hard to do. Luckily for me, my next project is a redesign and I do have most of the pages of text already done. I will definitely be using real text instead of lorem ipsum during that.