11 Different Flavours of Lorem Ipsum

Right, let’s get the boring but easy stuff out the way first. Lorem Ipsum is placeholder text. It’s been around as long as Keith Richards habit and like it or not, it is essential to what you as a designer do…… or is it?

If you are just getting started in web design, Lorem Ipsum is the filler text you will be seeing as people populate their genius ideas and need text to fill in the gaps. You will discover later however that it soon becomes the awful proof that your client is a lazy so and so who refuses to pull their finger out and give you copy they promised…….. but I digress.

Having chosen a career in design means that you will soon begin to see Mr. Ipsum on a regular basis. It means absolutely nothing and although that was partially the intent during its creation, it’s hardly conducive for keeping us all alive as we work into the early hours of the morning.

But fear not, there are alternatives. Here are 10 options, one of which I hope suits your own personality.

1. Fillerati

The best looking of the sites shown today, Fillerati goes that little bit further. A simple and well thought out interface, the HTML 5 and CSS3 site makes it especially simple of get what you need and fast. <p>, <h1>, <li> and text all come as variable presets and the text itself comes courtesy of Project Gutenberg.

2. Fillerama

Fillerama takes some of the best lines from The Simpsons, Dr, Who and Futurama and serves them up in multiple paragraphs to relieve you designing boredom. They are even so kind as to drop in <p> tags while you weren’t looking. For another Simpsons related dummy text, see the next example.

3. Bacon Ipsum

What would be undoubtedly Homer Simpson’s text generator of choice, Bacon Ipsum does exactly as it says on the tin, frying pan, bbq, carvery or spit. The developer says Lorem Bacon Ipsum just popped into his head one day, no doubt whilst he sat in the doctors waiting for his cholesterol test to come back.

4. Vegan Ipsum

If the thought of all those dead pigs has your in tears then perhaps Katie and Ben’s ‘Vegan Ipsum’ is the site for you. A straight up paragraph generator making use of English veggie names, you have a choice of between 1 and 5 paragraphs. As they put it, “All filler, no killer”.

5. Hipster Ipsum

If the veggies weren’t yet enough of a departure from bacon for you, surely Hipster Ipsum is as far as you’ll need to go. Perfectly suited to the Artisan, you can feel guilt free sipping on your soy milk latte as you tap away on your MacBookPro.

6. Gangsta Ipsum

From the sanctity of Starbucks straight onto the streets of Compton, Gangsta Ipsum comes at you raw. It makes no sense but then again neither does Lorem. Totally worth it and will have you smiling.

7. The Dialectizer

This one requires a bit of work first time you use it but if you save it on a doc file somewhere you can come back to it again and again. You can choose from a Cockney, Moron, Swedish chef and more, but if you asked a redneck who WCB were he would say “Leadin’ Web an’ Graphic Design Trainin’ Centre Fueled By a Creative an’ Passhunate Fambly”.

8. Old Bailey Transcripts

Although not a generator, oldbailyonline.org is packed full of transcripts from London’s Central Court from cases from the 1600s. Apparently vagabonding was illegal as “Peter Lawman, was Indicted for Felony; for that he, being above the Age of 14 years, was seen to wander up and down, calling himself an Egyptian.”

9. Greeking Machine

Greeking Machine gives you more choice than any of its competitors. With an additional 6 ‘languages’ Techno Babble, Pseudo German, Metropolitan, Marketing, The Matrix and Hillbilly you have more than enough choice. Be warned though, using the Matrix late at night may well have you worried your have been struck by a nasty virus and wishing your had backed up again.

10. Malevole

I saved the best for last because it’s the simplest and targeted right at my age group. Anyone who uses copy from 80s English TV shows is just straight up genius in my eyes. Ten years ago a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. Guess they thought BA used Lorem Ipsum then.

11. Thailipsum

Recently Web Courses Bangkok released a new Lipsum called Thailipsum. Our Instructor Carl has done his best to show uniqueness of  Thailand in this website through graphics and text. To be honest i think this website is hilarious. If you got Thai fever then Thailipsum should be fun to use for your website. Have fun with Thailipsum.

Summary

So in case you’ve been bored to tears by standard Lorem Ipsum, now you have enough choice to pick your very own favourite flavour of Lorem Ipsum for your next website project. Whether you’re a vegan, a carnivore, a Futurama fan or a hobby historian or just plain cool, your Lorem Ipsum text will never be boring again.

You don’t have a website to put any Lorem Ipsum in, but want to learn how to make one? Check out our Web Design Courses at Web Courses Bangkok!

Thanks to Tom Bryant for this article!

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