What are you talking about?  Lorem ipsum is a gift from the web gods.  How will I get people to admire and appreciate my beautiful designs if I stop generating ipsum paragraphs and headings.  This is how I use to feel until I read this entry from the book Getting Real by 37 Signals.

Lorem ipsum changes the way copy is viewed. It reduces text-based content to a visual design element — a shape of text — instead of what it should be: valuable information someone is going to have to enter and/or read. Dummy text means you won’t see the inevitable variations that show up once real information is entered…

I know designers hate it when they show clients a design, only to have them ignore the design an focus on the text you put in 5 mintues earlier.  I’ve been there, trying to explain to clients that it’s just “filler” text.  But, if text is an important part of the design, we should spend more time with it and figure out better ways to weave it in.

Perhaps, start your layout with text and then add graphical elements to emphasize the text.  I don’t know the answer, but I do like the idea of people paying just as much attention to what there website says, as to how it looks.

I will say lorem ipsum has its place and use.  But, if we can avoid it for real copy text, we can get a much more accurate picture of how our design will work.