Best of the Web is an occasional series of posts about what I believe shows the Internet at its best. The choices are entirely personal.
Lorem Ipsum is a printer’s tradition for filling in areas that will eventually have text in them when creating a mock up. The text that used to fill in is traditionally some scrambled Latin from a Classical Latin text on ethics from around 45 CE. It’s sometimes called “dummy text”.
The idea is that if there is actual text in the reader’s native language, they will become distracted by that text. Since it’s only a placeholder, the printer just wants the reader to acknowledge “Here there will be text” and focus on the larger design. Here’s the traditional text:
“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.”
Printers have been doing this since the 1500s. Many modern desktop publishing programs even include the ability in their software. But this is the 21st Century! There’s no reason not to have more interesting place holding text.
The first one I came across was Bacon Ipsum, which generates dummy text with a meatier approach:
Bacon ipsum dolor amet ipsum hamburger exercitation turkey dolore. Pancetta do fugiat kielbasa duis shank filet mignon ham hock bresaola sint t-bone cillum. Strip steak non brisket ham hock proident. Qui reprehenderit eiusmod tongue swine. Bresaola aliqua brisket nulla flank in exercitation minim short loin. Turkey ex duis, labore deserunt venison elit velit capicola quis ut nisi.
But far away my favorite is Bob Ross Lipsum. Ross was the host of “The Joy of Painting” which aired on PBS for 11 years. Best known for his perpetual sunny outlook and chirpy little sayings, like “happy little clouds”, “happy accidents”. That optimistic outlook made him easy to parody but the part that always amazed me was that if I watched even part of an episode, Ross always left me with that feeling that I could paint too. So the next time I need some dummy text, I will jumping right on over to this website. It doesn’t quite meet the classical intent of not giving the reader distractions but I don’t care. The world can use a little more Bob Ross (who died in 1995)
We’ll take a little bit of Van Dyke Brown. Clouds are free. They just float around the sky all day and have fun. That’s what makes life fun. That you can make these decisions. That you can create the world that you want. All kinds of happy little splashes.
Check out my favorite Bob Ross mashup:
Stories Are My Life 
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