Speed Up Your Web Design Workflow Tip #1 – Lorem Ipsum

As a web designer you probably have a bunch of tasks which seem to pop up in every project e.g. download the latest WordPress release, strip down the twentyeleven WordPress theme, create layer folders in your PSD file, download a reset.css file, etc.

Doing these tasks for every single project is insane so you must be constantly thinking of ways to speed up your workflow in a bid to become more efficient and to allow yourself to tackle more challenging tasks.

If your kept busy all day you probably don’t have much time to think about or even implement these timesavers. So, every so often (hopefully every week) I’ll be featuring tips and tricks on how to speed up your design/development workflow so you can spend more time building exciting projects rather than carrying out mundane tasks.

Whenever I start building a mockup or a prototype and I’m without copy (text) I usually use Lorem Ipsum dummy text, which usually requires me to:

• Open up my browser
• Type lorem ipsum into Google
• Head over to Lipsum
• Highlight and copy a paragraph or two to my clipboard
• Switch back to Photoshop (by this time my Type tool has lost focus)
• Paste the lorem ipsum text where appropiate

I might even end up shortening the paragraph or pasting it over and over again. The point is I waste precious time repeating these steps for individual projects. All of this effort for something which really shouldn’t consume so much time.

While browsing the Mac App Store I stumbled across a great tool which has really helped me speed up my workflow  — LittleIpsum. The handy tool is developed by Dustin Senos and is described as…

The best Latin text generator for OS X.
Incredibly quick and lightweight.
And it’s completely free!

I have to say this tagline is 100% accurate! Once you download and install the app the LittleIpsum icon appears in the menu bar. From there you can select how many words or paragraphs you need with a simple and intuitive interface. Once you select how much text you need, it’s copied to your clipboard and ready to paste. You never have to leave Photoshop or your code editor again.

I’m aware that LittleIpsum is only available for the Mac. If I come across a similar tool available for Windows then I’ll post an update here.