Here are some additional tips that I am sure you will find useful and that will aid in your design productivity.
Much of the text you have seen in the examples throughout this book have been what is known as lorem ipsum text, commonly referred to in the design world as dummy text. Dummy text is used to create text for wireframes without having to type or use actual text that can distract from the design itself.
To find dummy text, you can go online to http://www.lipsum.com/ or you can stay within Balsamiq and use this very cool trick as follows:
- Open
project_mockup_2.bmml. - Click on the first paragraph under George's Accomplishments and double-click, or press Enter, to make the content editable.
- Place the cursor somewhere in the paragraph and type the word
lorem.
Like magic, Balsamiq provides you with an entire paragraph of lorem ipsum text. Very cool indeed.
Just as we use dummy text so as to not distract the viewer from our design, Balsamiq offers a way to do this with images as well, using a feature called Sketch it!.
To use it, perform the following steps:
- Double-click the image in
project_mockup_2.bmmlto open the Load Image dialogue window.At the bottom of the window you will notice the Sketch it! checkbox.
- Click the checkbox to check it/sketch it and press Import, as shown in the following screenshot:
Here is a before and after image I created using Sketch it!. I'll let you decide which one looks better. As you can see, the image on the right looks more in line with the black and white style of your wireframe, thus, lessening the potential for distractions as you present your design ideas.
Auto-Size is a Property Inspector tool that will return an image to its original size, as shown in the following screenshot:
To use it, simply select an image that you want to return to its original dimensions and click the Auto-Size icon. Like almost everything else in Balsamiq, it is really that easy.