My Lorem Ipsum Story

Rabbit Hole released a delightful video detailing the history of Lorem Ipsum, the meaningless faux Latin placeholder text derived from Cicero and used throughout graphic design. Definitely worth a watch.¹

This video reminded me of my own funny little Lorem Ipsum story…

A long time ago, I worked at a large corporation as an in house design manager. One of our internal subsidiaries was struggling with profitability and brought a very senior, respected executive out of retirement to get the company back on track.

This executive asked that we meet with him to go over the direct mail marketing materials that our team had developed. The mailers were in the early stages, and the body copy was all placeholder copy — Lorem Ipsum. Our account manager and I walked through the current status and explained the design system. After we were done, the executive looked puzzled.

“We aren’t targeting hispanic markets. Why is this in Spanish?”

I paused, not wanting to embarrass him, but completely unsure how to respond. Our account manager took over with a simple “We’ll take care of it,” and the conversation moved on to next steps. I always appreciated her quick thinking.

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Bob Wertz is the Director of Research Training at the University of South Carolina, a Ph.D. student and typeface designer living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.