OMG – Kittens!*

For designers, a placeholder (or dummy) image is pretty much what you’d expect from the name: a blank square or rectangle, or generic image placed into a layout or wireframe to indicate where an image will be located before the actual illustration is chosen. Designers use it for images the way they use Lorem Ipsum text.

There are several ways to generate these images and a number of services that provide code or images, so that designers can focus on getting the layout right and not be forced to think about the images or graphics until it’s time. Placehold.it is maybe the most well known.

All these services are pretty easy to use. For web wireframes or webapps, you basically insert a short bit of code into your layout, like this: <img src=”https://placehold.it/350×150″>, and you’ll get a placeholder from whichever of these services you choose. For most of them you can specify size, for some you can insert text, for the photo-based ones, you can sometimes specify black and white vs. color or abstract vs. representational.

Some other popular and versatile services are:

Dummyimage.com, which allows you to add text.

Lorumpixum.com, which has an image library.

Flickholdr.com, which contains a bit of code that pulls creative commons images from flickr.

But none of these can compete with the cute overload that is placekitten.com. Which uses random (but always adorable) photos of kittens for your placeholder images.

All of these services are going to be useful to anyone building out websites or webapps, but just think how much more pliable all of our clients will be when they see their wireframes populated with adorable kittens! It’s instant happiness.