"lorem ipsum dolor" origin.

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetaur adipisicing 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.

the garble text above is called "greeking" in graphic design. it's used as placeholder copy to help illustrate layout, wireframe, and typographic style. the most common greek verbaged used is "lorem ipsum dolor". i recently learned that it's not just latin garble; rather, it is something with history:

"Lorem ipsum is latin, slightly jumbled, the remnants of a passage from Cicero's _de Finibus_ 1.10.32, which begins 'Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit...' [There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain.]. [de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written in 45 BC, is a treatise on the theory of ethics very popular in the Renaisance.]

What I find remarkable is that this text has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since some printer in the 1500s took a galley of type and scambled it to make a type specimen book; it has survived not only four centuries of letter-by-letter resetting but even the leap into electronic typesetting, essentially unchanged except for an occational 'ing' or 'y' thrown in. It's ironic that when the then-understood Latin was scrambled, it became as incomprehensible as Greek; the phrase 'it's Greek to me' and 'greeking' have common semantic roots!" - http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/lorem_ipsum.html

here's a nice apple dashboard widget if you want to quickly select some "lorem ipsum" copy to throw into your layout. personally, i just use a text file, and i keep it open all the time. other programs, such as indesign actually already have it build in as a right click feature. all design programs should have this as an F-key by default.






if you want some nice fonts, go to veer.com. it's a great place to start—especially if you're trying to find the perfect typeface for a logo. you can actually use their service (for free) to generate a name in different fonts on the fly. it's an impressive and useful feature. unfortunately, all the fonts are pretty expensive. i only recommend this service if you're a fulltime designer or freelancer.

what are you favorite fonts? mine are:
1. din
2. univers

what's yours?