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Welcome to Podcast Awesome, where we chat about icons, design, tech, business, and nerdery

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with members of the Font Awesome team.

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Well, as you may know, I am a member of the Font Awesome team myself, and I, Matt Johnson,

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am your host for this solo episode.

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Occasionally, we do deep dive episodes on oddball icons or tech nerd culture in general.

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Before we begin this episode of Podcast Awesome, I feel it is my duty, nay, my calling, to provide

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context for the viewers.

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You see, while design may dazzle, it's words that inform, and sometimes writers find themselves

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feeling overlooked, forgotten, lorem ipsum, if you will.

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In this episode, despite its design-forward nature, does explore the crucial intersection of layout

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and language.

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So I shall allow it to continue.

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Under protest.

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And this one's indeed smack dab in the middle of, I guess you could say, design territory.

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Well, I'm generally what one would call a content creator, and I got my start as a writer and

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an editor.

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But in all honesty, I'd probably be considered a poser when it comes to correct copy editing.

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Don't tell the boss.

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When I'm writing, I just kind of let her rip and enlist my editing nerd friends to fix all

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my bonehead mistakes.

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But maybe you know writers or editors that get a little hot under the collar about very particular

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writer world stuff.

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For example, you probably could have guessed this one, but the top of the list is the deathmatch

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level issue over the use of the Oxford comma or the serial comma.

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Now you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses, would you?

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Well, Oxford comma purists will definitely fight you in the streets over this one.

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And you've probably seen the commas save lives memes.

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You know, the unpunctuated let's eat grandma versus let's eat grandma.

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Or how about the overuse of the word literally?

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Literally.

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Literally.

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Literally.

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There's literally nothing in this world that you cannot do.

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Literally.

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We all have friends who say things repetitively like, I literally died laughing.

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No, dude, you did not literally die.

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Then there's writing in the passive voice.

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So when someone says something like, mistakes were made.

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I acknowledge that mistakes were made here.

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And he's right.

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Mistakes were made.

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Mistakes were made here.

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Clearly mistakes were made.

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A writer who really believes in the power of grammar is going to ask in just who made the mistake and why did you make the mistake and whether justice will be served.

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Or how about passive aggressive quotation marks?

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This one's pretty funny.

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How about this one?

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Those quotation marks are working overtime to tell you this underwear is new ish.

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Like it's new to someone.

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Probably not anyone that values dignity, cleanliness, or elastic.

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Or how about this one?

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Is it cheese?

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Is it melted yellow enthusiasm?

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I'm going to need some answers and probably a lab test.

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Well, well, well.

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If it isn't the Department of Homeland, sarcasm.

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Anywho, as a lazy writer, these are, you know, they're mildly irritating, but mostly entertaining when folks get all bent out of shape about it.

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I will say, though, that I do have an issue with Lorem Ipsum placeholder text, and I'm about to tell you why.

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But before I let loose on my rant, maybe we'll cover where this poser content got its start.

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For those not in the know, Lorem Ipsum text is the gibberish copy that designers sometimes put into text boxes when they're creating a website, and it looks a little bit like this.

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We've all seen this stuff.

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So, when did Lorem Ipsum come on the scene, and where did it come from?

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Lorem Ipsum is kind of like the elevator music of web design.

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It's always there.

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It's completely ignored.

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And somehow, inexplicably, it's still in use.

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The story starts with Cicero, the Roman philosopher and orator who lived over 2,000 years ago.

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Lorem Ipsum comes from his work, Definibus Banorum.

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I said Banorum.

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Et Malorum.

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Which translates as, on the extremes of good and evil.

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Yes, the same guy whose name you vaguely remember from your Western Philosophy 101 class is now helping you decide if Helvetica is better than Roboto.

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But here's what's funny about Lorem text.

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Lorem Ipsum, it's not actually Latin.

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It's kind of like Latin if you were to throw it into the blender.

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So, the story goes that somewhere along the line, printers in the 1500s started scrambling Cicero's words to create nonsensical text for mockups.

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Because if you used real text, people would focus on reading it instead of admiring the layout.

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And so, Lorem Ipsum was born.

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Fast forward a few centuries to the 20th century and designers and typesetters everywhere needed filler text that wouldn't distract their clients from the important stuff.

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Like margins and kerning.

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And that brings us into the printing industry era, which resurrected Lorem Ipsum and made it the gold standard for placeholders.

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But the real glow up happened in the 1980s with the rise of desktop publishing.

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Lorem Ipsum found its bestie in the world of software and together they became inseparable.

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Adobe, Microsoft, and pretty much every design tool you can think of adopted Lorem Ipsum as their default filler text.

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And then the internet came along.

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Lorem Ipsum became even more mainstream, showing up in mockups, wireframes, and even as accidental live text on actual websites.

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There are stories of sites going live with Lorem Ipsum Delore Sit Amet proudly displaying in their headers.

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Nothing screams we forgot to QA quite like Latin gibberish on a homepage.

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These days, designers have a love-hate relationship with Lorem.

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It's helpful, but it's also kind of ridiculous.

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So naturally, the internet decided to have some fun with it.

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And here are some fun Lorem Ipsum-inspired shenanigans.

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Bacon Ipsum.

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For designers who prefer their placeholder text, crispy, smoky, salty, and delicious.

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Instead of Delore Sit Amet, you get phrases like bacon brisket ham hawk perschetta.

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Or hipster Ipsum, because every mockup needs a little avocado toast and a twirly mustache.

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This one includes gems like artisanal coffee quinoa.

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Or cat Ipsum, placeholder text for kitty cat enthusiasts featuring meow meow purr jump on the keyboard.

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Or zombie Ipsum, perfect for creepy blood splattered projects.

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Ew.

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With phrases like brains, brains, brains, run for your life.

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The beauty of Lorem Ipsum is that it's endlessly customizable.

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Need placeholder text that makes your client laugh?

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There's an Ipsum generator for that.

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Need to make your wireframe look serious and polished?

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Good old Lorem Ipsum's the go-to standby.

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Okay, so here's my rant about Lorem Ipsum that I need to get off my chest, all right?

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Okay.

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About 10 years ago, I was working at a tech consultancy refreshing their website.

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And the designer was giving folks a preview and it was chock full of Lorem text.

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I looked over at a senior writer and it's like she had steam coming out of her ears.

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And she was clearly agitated.

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And she went on this rant that basically went like this.

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And it's something that I'll always remember.

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Nothing screams words don't matter quite like cramming a design full of meaningless Latin gibberish

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just so the visuals can shine in all their emptiness.

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As if the entire point of a website isn't to, you know, communicate something.

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But sure, let's prioritize font turning and white space over actual content.

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Because it's totally fine if the copy gets crammed into a tiny text box at the last minute, right?

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And don't even get me started on how Lorem Ipsum is basically a free pass for design teams

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to ignore the importance of a solid content strategy.

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If your design only works with nonsense text, it doesn't actually work.

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Maybe the words should come first and the layout should support them

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instead of treating content like a second-rate citizen on a site.

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What do I know?

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I'm just the person writing the stuff that actually makes the site useful.

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I don't know.

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Forget this, man.

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This is bull****.

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Okay.

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Rant over.

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It's fine.

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I'm fine.

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So there you have it.

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From Cicero's philosophical musings to bacon-scented placeholder text,

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Lorem Ipsum has gone from ancient wisdom to digital wallpaper.

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It's true.

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Lorem text is a little ridiculous.

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But then so is designing an entire website with no real words.

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And then wondering why it doesn't feel right.

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So whether you're a Lorem lover or a content-first purist,

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just remember, words do matter.

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Okay?

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Fonts are cool.

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Layouts are sexy.

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But you know what they say.

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That's right.

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Content is king.

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Thanks for tuning in to this solo rant of Podcast Awesome.

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If you enjoyed it, maybe you can leave us a review.

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Share it with your favorite designer or copywriter friend.

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Or send us your weirdest Ipsum generator text.

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As always, Podcast Awesome was produced and edited by this guy right here, Matt Johnson.

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The video episodes like this one, we get a little extra helping hand from Mr. Isaac Chase.

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The Podcast Awesome theme song was composed by Ronnie Martin.

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And if you like those pop electronic jams that sound a little bit like video game music,

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you're going to want to check out his website and look at his past music career.

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Because there's some real gems there.

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The music Interstitials were composed by Zach Malm.

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He also has a website and has really cool 8-bit style music you're going to want to check out.

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And we can leave all that information in the show notes.

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You can check that out there.

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And audio mastering was done, as always, by Chris Enns at Lemon Productions.

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And audio mastering was done, as always, by Chris Enns at Lemon Productions.