
BLOKK – A font for clients who don't understand lorem ipsum - Garbage
http://blokkfont.com/
======
gitaarik
I like to advocate against using placeholder texts most of the time. The
problem is often that designers/developers have to create a page with some
content on it, but they don't know the content yet. They know a bit what it's
about but the real texts on the page are not ready yet. Then they use Lorem
Ipsum or something else.

This is wrong from the start. Before designing a page, you should know what
the content is gonna be. The content should then decide what the design is
gonna look like. Essentially, content is part of the design.

Designs that used placeholder texts like Lorum Ipsum can also fail, because
the real texts turn out to be much shorter/longer than the placeholder text.
Or the text is really something else than the designer/developer expected. Or
the designer placed some cool text box somewhere but nobody has an idea what
kind of content they should put there. This often results in useless texts
appearing on the page because the design demands it. Or the other way around,
the product owner wants to add a certain text somewhere, but there's not
really a place for that in the design, often resulting in an ugly/quick fix.

In the end it is all about the content. The design is to complement the
content. So I think generally the best approach is to start with the content,
then create a design to complement the content.

Of course, in some situations it's not possible, but if you can, start with
the content!

~~~
post_break
Oh man, if only it was a perfect world right? If I had the content I could
complete so many of my to-dos. But no, I'm sitting here waiting for the boss
to get me the content.

I'd love to have the content first, but it's just never going to happen.

~~~
vinspee
This is your own fault. You've made your "boss" believe that you can complete
designs without content for so long that he now expects it. You should try re-
framing the conversation. Something like:

— SCENE: BOSS TYPING FURIOUSLY, YOU KNOCK ON HIS DOOR AND HE INVITES YOU IN.

BOSS: "We need this design for our new sprocket page as soon as possible -
We're going to market in two weeks and need a landing page for our Google
AdWords campaign"

YOU: "Awesome! The new sprocket is going to be huge for our company. What
would you really like to focus on for this page? I want to make sure to
prominently feature the most important things."

BOSS: _excitedly lists a dozen things_

YOU: Wow - this thing is really great. It's going to be a huge benefit to our
customers. How can we show them the three things they're going to react to
instantly?

BOSS: "Well my favorite is the gizmosis feature. It makes it so you don't have
to flim-flam any more!"

YOU: "Woah. That's really cool! I'll make sure that is billed highly. Anything
else you can thing of that sticks out in your mind?"

BOSS: "That's the only thing that sticks out. I do have this detailed list of
features here"

YOU: "Please do send that to me - I'll try to make some sense of it. If you
think of anything else really important, just email it over to me. I'm going
to start putting all of these features into the design tomorrow morning - so
make sure you let me know by the end of the day! I can't wait to get this page
up for our clients to see - it's going to be a huge win."

BOSS: "Excellent. I'll send over any additional thoughts I have with that
document right now. Thanks."

— END SCENE

Framing the conversation is important. Seeing yourself as the boss's advocate
is important. You're working toward the same goal. The content is more
important than your design. Accept that.

~~~
post_break
It's my own fault he wants to see what it will look like before signing off on
something? Yeah ok.
[http://i.imgur.com/seh6p.gif](http://i.imgur.com/seh6p.gif)

~~~
vinspee
Nope. It's just your fault the you've told him "this is what it will look
like" before having the content. It's not the truth.

EDIT: He's not going to "sign off" on it until the content is in anyway…
right?

~~~
talmand
I'm willing to bet many people have "signed off" on things before there was
content.

People seem to forget that lorem ipsum is not a new thing, it's been a part of
design for decades. It is an accepted practice during design phases of a
project, whether digital or print.

------
qznc
This is not at all helpful, because the blocks are too "dark", in the sense
that bold font is "darker" because more "ink" is used.

A lorem ipsum font would be a font which looks like ASCII until you actually
read it. Maybe using something like kyrillic (Кириллон алфавиты глаголицæйы
тæваг дæр зыны, фæлæ йæ дамгъæтæй фылдæр бердзенаг алфавитæй сты) would be a
good idea.

(disclaimer: I have no idea which language the above example is. Only random
Wikipedia clicking.)

edit: the Redacted font others mentions is better

~~~
schoen
Using Cyrillic text this way might end up running into the same problem that
the creator of this font describes: designers' clients might feel that they're
_supposed to be able to understand it_ , but can't. So they might still
complain that the text of their site/product/etc. has been replaced with
something unintelligible, much as they seem to do now with lorem ipsum mock-
ups.

The use of æ in your Cyrillic text suggests Ossetian, like in the Ossetian
word дæр _dær_ 'and'. Ossetian is the only language that uses the character æ
in its Cyrillic alphabet.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_alphabets#Summary_tab...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_alphabets#Summary_table)

~~~
DanBC
So why won't they complain about the fonts being broken and being replaced by
bars?

~~~
schoen
I bet they'll complain about that too!

~~~
hobs
The correct thing to do is determine how much of the complaints you get have
to do with lorem ipsum, or if a little bit of additional explanation might be
useful for your new/prospective clients when they see the site for the first
time.

Everyone will hear complaints from their customers (I hope, or they wont have
customers for very long), the question is if that is a problem that fixing
will save you time or make you more money.

My read is not much of either.

If you want a fallback like this black box font for the clients who wont/cant
be educated that is fine, but you might want to consider firing your client if
they are causing enough exasperation that you create entirely new fonts.

------
asb
Adam Schwartz's Magic of CSS has a nice trick for getting the same effect
without needing a custom font.

See it in action at [http://adamschwartz.co/magic-of-css/potions/two-pane-
app/](http://adamschwartz.co/magic-of-css/potions/two-pane-app/)

The relevant CSS is in [http://adamschwartz.co/magic-of-
css/css/potions.css](http://adamschwartz.co/magic-of-css/css/potions.css):

    
    
      .mock-paragraph b {
        display: -moz-inline-stack;
        display: inline-block;
        vertical-align: middle;
        *vertical-align: auto;
        zoom: 1;
        *display: inline;
        background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1);
        width: 3.125em;
        height: 0.5em;
        margin-right: 0.3125em;
        margin-bottom: 0.3125em; }
        .mock-paragraph b:nth-last-child(4n+1) {
          width: 4.5625em; }
        .mock-paragraph b:nth-last-child(10n+1) {
          width: 0.875em; }
        .mock-paragraph b:nth-last-child(9n+1) {
          width: 5em; }

~~~
rrrx3
Solid link. Thanks. Bookmarked.

------
hakanderyal
Interestingly, the whole point of lorem ipsum is people don't understand it,
so they can focus on design when reviewing, not what is written. A good
alternative to 'text goes here...' stuff.

These kind of fonts look good on wireframes, not so much on prototypes in my
experience.

------
juhq
Interestingly I just found redacted font from product hunt which seems to have
similar vision. [https://github.com/christiannaths/Redacted-
Font](https://github.com/christiannaths/Redacted-Font)

Either way, good job, will use either one in some projects! Thanks :)

~~~
rrrx3
Fantastic. I've used BLOKK in wireframes and run into the same issues that the
creator of Redacted did - the text doesn't have a predictable width. It can be
a pain in the ass to use because of this.

Glad you posted this, I'll be giving it a go ASAP.

------
daemonl
I use the introduction text from the Wikipedia article on lorem ipsum. Best of
both worlds, and meta lols.

~~~
alxndr
Wow, that's perfect!

------
Havvy
This is of no use to me. I generally want to know the font styles I'm working
with. Seeing black bars doesn't help with that.

~~~
onion2k
This is a good illustration of exactly why this font is useful - you want to
focus on typography, so you think you need to see text. Given a mockup that
needs comments about the layout, or color, or whatever you'll be looking at
the wrong bit. This font lets you can see where the text goes, but you can't
spend time worrying about the font, weight, kerning, etc so you'll only be
able to give feedback on the bits that need feedback.

Obviously if a design needs comments about the typography the designer
wouldn't use this font.

------
IgorPartola
I really love this, and look forward to using it. I especially like it because
there is now way you are going to confuse this for filled in content and
launch a site with it in there.

On the subject of placeholder text: some like it, some hate it, most use it.
If you are a designer, and use placeholder text, please, _please_ , PLEASE, I
beg of you, don't use the same bit of text for everything. Grab a bookmarklet,
or widget or whatever to generate random lengths of text for everything. There
are so many designs I've gotten over the years where it looks fantastic as
long as every bit of text is exactly the same height, but as soon as
placeholders are filled with real content, the design looks horrible.

Also, any designer that stopped delivering PSD's and started delivering
markup, if we meet in person I'll buy you a beer.

------
rbobby
"Why are there so many black lines? Do they have to be black or could we use a
different color?"

~~~
wernercd
Because we tried to use white lines and people complained that was racist and
that we shouldn't give into White Privilege. #BlackLinesMatter

/s

------
myfonj
█████ ██ ███ ████████ ███████ ██ ██████ █ ██████▓▓▓▒▒░

~~~
ahoge
Yea, Unicode got that covered:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Elements](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_Elements)

Related:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_Drawing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_Drawing)

------
ThomPete
I consider copywriting part of the design process.

Language is aesthetic and functional and it's implication on the design is
actually way bigger than most people would give it credit for.

So I normally find great enjoyment in trying to write what I consider the
right copy. Sometimes I will inspire the copywriters, love when that happens.

------
Silhouette
Nice idea.

Does anyone know if this is completely free to use or available under some
specific licence(s)?

~~~
Animats
I doubt the author could claim sufficient originality for it to be covered by
copyright. Especially since Facebook pages look like that when loading.

 _" (The) standard of originality (in copyright law) is low, but it does
exist"_ \- U.S. Supreme Court, in Feist vs. Rural Telephone.

------
ikurei
I've always used Lorem Ipsum; never had a problem with designers or clients,
but with other developers actually.

I understand that Lorem Ipsum has a letter distribution close to real text in
English, and thus it is useful to judge how things will look. Other than that,
couldn't you use more obviously-dummy text? Like "blah blahblah blah."?

Or just "This is an example text; we hope you like how it looks."?

------
iqonik
I like the idea but I am not sure if it fixes a real problem. I don't think I
have ever had feedback from clients complaining they don't understand the
text.

Where did you get your validation from?

Edit: Looking at the amount of likes/tweets you seem to have social
validation, just not sure where I would use it.

~~~
mathieuh
I mocked up a website for someone once and they asked me to translate some
lorem ipsum into English (I think they thought it was French).

------
Intermernet
This seems similar, but possibly more useful as it won't distract the reader
with large geometric blocks of uniform color.

[http://notionparallax.co.uk/wordpress/?p=1491](http://notionparallax.co.uk/wordpress/?p=1491)

------
mgkimsal
I'm still waiting for someone to develop the "password" font ( __ __ __ __ __
__) so I can tell clients to use that before they put passwords in Word docs
before they email them over.

~~~
josephwegner
I'm hoping that you're kidding, but in case you're not, this is definitely not
secure. It's only marginally more secure than just sending it in a regular
font.

If anyone were trying to intercept that document in order to steal passwords,
the font would have absolutely no bearing on their ability to find the
password. In plaintext (ie: document opened in Sublime, or other plaintext
editor) the password would be very obvious. And even if the interceptor didn't
open it in plaintext, it would be incredibly easy for them to just... change
the font.

Using a "password" font would only decrease the likelihood of someone reading
the password over your shoulder. I guess that has value, but I think you'd be
way better off finding a real encryption solution.

My coworkers and I use Keybase for sending secure info back and forth. The UI
there is super simple for people that don't actually understand PGP, but it's
(almost) just as secure. You could even do something simple like `keybase
decrypt password.txt | pbcopy` on a mac, and that would take the encrypted
text and put it in your clipboard - it would never show the password on your
screen in plaintext.

~~~
mgkimsal
Oh goodness, I'm kidding!!! I used to teach dev classes and I'd run that one
by in class to see who 'got it'. Thankfully most did. Would also joke about
using "soundex" matching on passwords to let people in with passwords that
were 'close enough'. Most people caught on to that one too (but surprisingly
not everyone did).

------
jamesdelaneyie
I guess this is handy for very early layout concepts. Any designer worth their
salt that isn't in a vice via client et al would drop it after the concepting
stage.

------
normloman
One reason to use placeholder text is to test how a font will look like in a
design. You can't do that if you're using this font.

Plus it's too dark.

------
ddebernardy
If you're designing a web page without the marketing copy it'll end up
holding, you're basically doing it wrong.

------
Raphmedia
This is nice. However, I would love to have more exemples... Set up a few
example pages!

------
cubano
Awww...screw all that logical stuff.

It just looks cool.

