Lorem ipsum isn't the only option. Every alternative exists because lorem has a specific weakness — too opaque, too evenly rhythmic, or too disconnected from the real content you're designing for. Here are the most useful.
Themed ipsums
- Bacon Ipsum — meat words. Fine for fun demos; absurd for a real site, which is the point in food-related projects.
- Hipster Ipsum — cliché lifestyle vocabulary ("cold-pressed artisanal locavore..."). Good for testing layouts for lifestyle brands.
- Cupcake Ipsum — dessert words. Happy, short, easy on the eyes.
- Corporate Ipsum — business jargon ("synergize stakeholder deliverables"). Fits B2B SaaS designs suspiciously well.
Pangrams and demo sentences
For typography reviews, you want every letter of the alphabet visible at least once — a pangram. Classics:
- The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
- Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
- Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Pangrams are the right tool when the content doesn't matter but glyph coverage does.
Realistic placeholder
The biggest shift in modern design practice: AI-generated copy that's close to what your final copy will look like. Ask an AI for "a product description for [your product] at 40 words in our brand voice", and you get placeholder that behaves like real content. Much better for catching real UX problems.
When to pick what
- Early structural design — lorem ipsum. You don't want reviewers reading.
- Typography review — pangrams + long lorem samples.
- Mid-stage layout review — realistic copy. Catches length problems.
- Usability testing — real copy or very-close-to-real. Never lorem.
The original. Sometimes it’s still the right tool. Configurable paragraphs, sentences, and words.