Tools of the Trade: Our Favorite Ipsums

When designing websites, print collateral, and other items for our clients, sometimes we have the concept of what needs to be designed but we don’t necessarily have all of the actual text (copy) that will be included in said design piece. In these cases, it is a long standing design tradition by designers, typographers, etc. to place filler text (or “greeking”) into the design to emulate what the final product will look like with copy inserted.

Historically, this “greek” text would start out with “Lorem Ipsum dolor sit amet…” and then continue on with a variety of interesting pseudo-latin words. The one I use most often is lipsum.com, which can generate any number of paragraphs of greeking that can be used in your design.

However, in recent years designers have begun to tire of the classic greeking convention and some clever folks have begun to develop alternate (and very creative) filler copy generators. Below are 5 of our favorite ipsum generators and a quick sample of the copy they provide:

Bacon Ipsum

With this generator, you can choose how many paragraphs of text you want and whether you want “meat only” or “meat and filler.” Here’s a sample:

Bacon ipsum dolor amet jowl sirloin pig, picanha ham hock salami shank swine bresaola short ribs pork loin. Pork belly flank picanha pork loin, tenderloin kielbasa beef ribs salami brisket. Spare ribs turkey kevin bresaola shankle swine salami filet mignon drumstick bacon turducken.

Yes, turducken. Brilliant.

Star Wars Ipsum

Being huge fans of the Star Wars series, we were excited to find this generator a few years ago. We can’t say we love the site’s design (background/text color) choices, but the text it generates is top notch. You can choose whether you’re a Padawan or a Jedi Grand Master and then it generates the copy. Here’s a sample:

Lucas ipsum dolor sit amet bibble jagged brak moff borsk rebo wicket calrissian yoda greeata. Felth bria quarren jabba rodian cadavine. Thrawn felucia klivian yevetha vagaari gora panaka. Isolder medon boltrunians veers ti ansion utai tenel r4-p17. Obi-wan qrygg sunrider kobok sabé boba tyber.

Nice to see Boba getting a mention in there.

Gangsta Ipsum

Another perennial favorite here in our office is Gangsta Ipsum. Or sometimes we refer to it as “Snoop Ipsum”. It does exactly what you’d think it might:

Lorizzle ipsizzle dolor sit amizzle, dang adipiscing elizzle. Nullizzle sapien velizzle, aliquet volutpizzle, own yo’ quis, gravida vizzle, arcu. Pellentesque uhuh … yih! tortizzle. Sizzle sheezy. Ass izzle dolizzle dapibus we gonna chung own yo’ pizzle. Izzle pellentesque nibh et turpis. Go to hizzle in tortor. Ghetto eleifend rhoncizzle shizznit. In bling bling brizzle mofo dictumst. Gizzle dapibus.

Samuel L. Ipsum

A more recent addition to our list of favorite ipsums is the Samuel L. Ipsum generator. This generator is based on quotes from Samuel L. Jackson’s movie appearances. Here’s a sample of the “lite” version of “slipsum”:

You think water moves fast? You should see ice. It moves like it has a mind. Like it knows it killed the world once and got a taste for murder. After the avalanche, it took us a week to climb out. Now, I don’t know exactly when we turned on each other, but I know that seven of us survived the slide… and only five made it out. Now we took an oath, that I’m breaking now.

Cupcake Ipsum

Finally, here’s a sweet, sugar-coated ipsum that is a real client pleaser. Cupcake ipsum lets you configure the length of your generated paragraphs and has an option to “add love” to your text. Here’s a quick sample that’s sure to make you hungry:

Cupcake ipsum dolor sit. Amet marzipan bear claw biscuit fruitcake. Croissant chupa chups jujubes. Cotton candy jujubes cake liquorice jelly pastry. Powder gummies lemon drops wafer sweet. Ice cream pie brownie muffin. Chocolate sweet apple pie marzipan danish carrot cake soufflé pastry biscuit. Bonbon cotton candy wafer marshmallow gummi bears. Chocolate bar soufflé cupcake sesame snaps candy canes jelly-o dessert. Chocolate cake gingerbread dragée donut liquorice topping gummies.

We hope these creative ipsums have provided you some entertainment and inspiration for your next project. For shizzle.