Although I have little raw skill to speak of, I absolutely love graphic design. Typefaces, print layout and printing presses fascinate me to no end. That said, there is a bit of design in my current position, as I do spend time designing course pages, standing up websites, blogs and wikis and creating print materials to share with districts.
Perhaps you have seen a design mockup before with nonsense text that looks like Latin, but is essentially gibberish. That text is known as “lorem ipsum.” This fake text allows graphic designers to design layouts for projects even if they don’t have real text to work with. It looks just close enough to English (or other Germanic or Romance languages) to give your layouts a real-world look while still clearly pushing nonsense text.
I find it especially useful when I am creating course templates to see how a page looks. For example, here is my template for a week announcement page I designed for a Moodle-based course last year:
Lately, however, I have run into some alternatives to this. They still work as intended, creating large blocks of fake text I can use to design and test layouts, but, add a tinge of fun and personality to this process. Here are my favorites:
Bacon Ipsum – A Meatier Lorem Ipsum Generator
This was my first alternative. Tell ‘em a number of paragraphs, and get ready for a protein blast:
Cupcake Ipsum: Sugar-Coated Lorem Upsum
Looking for something less… meaty? Try Cupcake Ipsum:
Looking for something darker? How about some “Kafka?” Not for the faint of heart…
I have used Bacon Ipsum for over a year… each time I share a layout with that text it always starts the meeting out with a good laugh. That’s the point here… keep it light. :)
Have fun!
