Bacon Ipsum

I've worn many hats: singer-songwriter, dancer, editor, non-profit volunteer director, experimental marketing manager, berets, newsboy caps. One of the hats I started wearing out of necessity - that, like so many other things, turned into its own beast - is graphic and web designer. As a musician, I needed to design flyers and CD artwork. But as a musician, I couldn't afford to hire a professional. Like the crazy person I am, I thought, "Well, I have a good eye - I could probably do this if I just taught myself Photoshop." (If it sounds interesting and I haven't done it before, it's just another challenge.) So that I did. Coding websites came soon after, though that had a larger learning curve, and paying clients followed a couple of years afterward.

As any designer knows, if clients can read the content text of a design mockup, they'll get distracted - instead of looking at the layout, they'll start pouring over details in wording. Enter Lorem Ipsum, the standard dummy text of the design industry, which, interestingly, has been in use in the 1500s. How's that for tradition? Since the text is derived from a piece of Latin literature, it looks like real text - but it's unreadable. 

Combine Lorem Ipsum with a programmer who has a sense of humor and a love for bacon - and meat in general - and you get Bacon Ipsum, filler text for the hungry masses. An example:

Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet in jowl aliquip pig shoulder, commodo beef consequat fatback shankle. Ex exercitation beef ribs aute eiusmod, magna quis ham cow eu short ribs bresaola nulla mollit. Tempor dolore salami bresaola, occaecat nisi velit tongue pancetta ut shank id cupidatat elit aute. Pork pancetta jerky, ut tri-tip quis chicken hamburger. Shoulder consectetur nulla, jerky cupidatat sirloin tempor rump pastrami voluptate nostrud cow tenderloin bacon labore. Cupidatat officia ad, spare ribs hamburger pork sirloin cow ea occaecat ground round aliquip ullamco consequat commodo. Ham cillum meatball, tempor venison id rump fatback.

Thanks to Peter for the link.