Lorem Ipsum for UI Mockups

Using it well

Lorem Ipsum for UI Mockups, in practice

Test the longest realistic string, not the average

Components break at their extremes. For every label, ask what the longest plausible real value is — a long name, a translated string, an edge-case product title — and check the component holds up.

Design the empty state too

Empty states are the most frequently forgotten screens in a mockup and among the most frequently seen by new users. Generate short blocks for them at the same time as the populated views.

Never use placeholder text for interactive labels

Buttons, form labels, error messages, and navigation items must be real from the start. They are how users understand the interface, and Latin makes them impossible to evaluate in usability testing.

Wireframes want less text, not more

At wireframe fidelity the question is where things go, not what they say. A low-fidelity box filled with three paragraphs invites feedback on content decisions nobody has made yet, which is the conversation a wireframe exists to avoid. One or two sentences per block is usually enough to show that a block holds prose.

High-fidelity mockups want realistic unevenness

Once the design is meant to look finished, identical text blocks become the problem. Real content is uneven: one card holds a sentence, its neighbour holds four. Generate several different lengths and distribute them deliberately, because a grid that only works with equal-length text does not work.

Mock the states nobody asks for

Empty, loading, error, and the single-item case are where interfaces actually fall apart, and they are the states least likely to appear in a review. Generate the extremes — nothing, one word, and far too much — and put them in the same file as the happy path so the questions get asked before implementation.

Developers read a mockup as a specification

Whatever length the placeholder happens to be, someone will build to it. A card that shows two lines of filler becomes a card that assumes two lines, and the bug arrives later with real data. If a field has a genuine maximum, annotate it in the file rather than implying it through the text you happened to generate. The mockup is a communication document, and an unlabelled length is a decision made by accident.