The folks at Areeba were email-reflecting* on a post by Site Geist which centres on the use of Lorem  Ipsum.  Do you love it or hate it? As you’d expect there was a considerable range in perspectives, and given we’re a lively bunch the range bubbled some interesting thoughts that I’ll paraphrase and share here.

Go read the post, and then you’ll follow on. In quick summary the Site Geist stated that filler content has very low value, and using the real content is far better. His call to action is for businesses to always use real material; and everything else is unforgivable.

In direct contrast I think Lorem Ipsum is fine.

Now in theory I agree, using junk content (of which Lorem Ipsum is the default benchmark) is bad. It has no context to the real purpose, no reflection of the ways that clients may us it, and also not real value for informal written communication. It is a string of words that chosen specifically because it means nothing. So if you use it you’re literally letting junk content be on display and as the mantra states – content is king. It is often so far from what will eventually be displayed, that you’re not going to catch the display issues, line wrapping, and other text artifacts that come when the real content is displayed.

However I take a pragmatic approach when doing project work, and I don’t worry too much about content until it is possible to understand what the content is, and what it needs in terms of display. Use of Lorem Ipsum is actually fine at a starting point, and worrying about it is almost pointless.

Why? Well let me get my soapbox…**

(a) You don’t have content yet.

I’ve built many sites where the final content was different from what was planned, or the client did not have anything to provide at the start. Sometimes you have a set of MS Word documents, other times it’s an old site; but waiting for content to be written when so many other things need to be done early in a project is *ahem* silly. Plan for some tweaking in the design, and get on with the other things you need to do on the project.

(b) The questions in the design on the weighting and amount of copy in a position should have been resolved in the wireframe.

The wireframe is an approximation of the final layout. If the wireframe is not reviewed and tweaked as part of the project process, then that is missing from the project process, and the developing company has partial responsibility for this. I say partial because sometimes clarity cannot be found, and in most scenarios I’ve been involved in where the wireframe was incomplete or incorrect, both the client and the supplier played a part in the oversight.

Lorem Ipsum gives the wireframe something to say, without spending another five days clarifying the language in use. If a wireframe needs to have exact content before sign-off then you’re really in deep and hot water, and it is bound to change anyway.

Ever tried to get a web developer to stay patient while the marketing department choose between several logos? Its time wasted for almost everyone.

(Did I mention my assumption that websites should be changeable, as they’re built with a CMS? No? Well, they should be).

(c) The design should handle overflow gracefully when content is not as specified by the client.

The estimate of copy might not be perfect, but it should be an approximation. Then consider that changing the presentation of content should not require a total re-build or re-cut-up, then we have flexibility. With that flexibility comes the options of how we communicate and manage the difficulty in the change.

If we as a vendor make a huge deal about every detail, the client will drown in our communication, and I prefer to stress about the details at a time when it is appropriate. If a change will take 30 minutes later to make after the client is reviewing the Beta, but it will add two hours to a discussion in the wireframe stage, then I’d rather wait. I know that some changes cost more later on and this is why thinking about the net effect is important.

The cases where this proves to be a train wreck are also cases where I’d bet the client is vague about a massive amount of other items; and therefore we knew some things were going to be difficult. Changing a content area from 50 chars to 150 chars is probably the least of our issues in that case.

Cheers,

Andrew

* Email-reflecting; is our internal spam email where anyone can jump on a soapbox and rant.

** Take this with the grain of salt that every blog article should be read with.