Replace Lorem Ipsum with Realistic French Data in Figma

Published June 26, 2026 — 8 min read

You’re presenting a mockup to your client. Everything is polished: typography, color palette, visual hierarchy. Then your client looks at the placeholder data:

“John Doe. 123 Main Street. Phone: (555) 000-0001.”

The illusion breaks. Your client, whose product targets French users, sees an interface that feels foreign. Trust in the mockup wavers — not because of the design, but because of the data.

This problem is more widespread than most designers realize, and it has a simple solution.

Lorem Ipsum is a convenient lie

Lorem Ipsum was invented to simulate text without distracting the eye from the design. That was a good idea for 16th-century print mockups.

In 2026, interfaces are interactive, contextual, and presented to clients who immediately imagine their own usage. When a form displays “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet” in a “Last name” field, the client doesn’t see a well-sized field — they see a disguised empty box.

Worse, standard auto-fill tools — Figma content fill, most generic plugins — offer English or American data by default. The result: French B2B SaaS mockups filled with “John Smith”, “New York”, “ZIP Code”, and 10-digit phone numbers with no country code.

What your French clients actually see

Imagine a mockup of a quote management tool for French tradespeople. Without realistic data:

Client : John Smith
Address: 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield
SIRET  : 00000000000000
IBAN   : DE89 3704 0044 0532 0130 00

With Données FR:

Client : Thomas Dupont
Address: 14 rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, 75011 Paris
SIRET  : 73282932000074
IBAN   : FR76 3000 6000 0112 3456 7890 189

The difference is immediate. The second version is immersive. The client can project their real use case. The demonstration becomes convincing.

INSEE data: first names that sound French

The Données FR plugin uses official INSEE data — the given names file and the surnames file, published under Open Licence 2.0 (Etalab).

These files contain the most common first and last names in France, weighted by their actual frequency in the population. The result: names that reflect the real demographic diversity of France.

You won’t get “Étienne Château-Lebrun” every time — you’ll get the same statistical distribution as the real population: plenty of Martin, Dupont, Bernard, along with Traoré, Nguyen, Fernandez.

Tutorial — inserting a first name and last name:

Open your Figma file and launch the Données FR plugin (right-click > Plugins > Données FR)
Click on the text node containing your “First name” placeholder
In the Données FR panel, click on First name
Repeat for the “Last name” node

[Screenshot: plugin interface with the Identity section open, cursor on the First name button, text node selected on canvas showing “Léa” after filling]

BAN: addresses that almost exist

The Base Adresse Nationale (BAN) is the official French address reference, maintained by IGN, La Poste, and municipalities, and published on data.gouv.fr under Open Licence.

Données FR draws from this database to build coherent addresses: the street name exists, the street type is correct (rue, avenue, impasse, allée…), and the postal code / city pair is always valid.

Street numbers are generated plausibly (no “99999 rue de la Paix”) but do not necessarily correspond to an existing building.

What you get:

14 rue de la Paix, 75001 Paris
3 avenue Jean Jaurès, 69007 Lyon
27 boulevard des Capucines, 13001 Marseille
8 impasse des Lilas, 31000 Toulouse
47 chemin du Moulin, 06000 Nice

[Screenshot: a list of 5 profile cards in Figma, each with a different French address, generated in batch mode in a single action]

SIRET, IBAN, NIR: admin data that passes validation

This is where Données FR truly stands out from generic tools.

The problem with zeros and repeated digits

When a designer manually types fictitious data into a prototype, the result is often 000000000000 or 12345678. If your prototype includes real-time validation — increasingly common in demos — the field immediately shows an error state.

Données FR generates data that passes official validation algorithms:

SIRET: 14 digits, valid per the Luhn algorithm used by INSEE
French IBAN: FR76 format, valid check digits per ISO 13616 (mod 97)
NIR: 15 digits with mod 97 check key, structured like a real social security number

What they are not: This data does not correspond to any real company, account, or person. It is only algorithmically valid — so your prototype doesn’t get covered in error messages.

[Screenshot: SEPA entry form in Figma showing fictitious IBAN “FR76 3000 6000 0112 3456 7890 189” without validation error, next to the same form showing “00000000000” in red with an error state]

Full tutorial — filling a client record in 60 seconds

Here’s how to fill a complete client record with Données FR:

Step 1 — Prepare your mockup

Make sure your placeholder text nodes have descriptive names in the Figma layers panel: “prenom” (first name), “nom” (last name), “email”, “telephone”, “adresse” (address), “siret”.

Step 2 — Enable person coherence (Premium)

In the Données FR panel, check Person coherence. This option ensures that first name, last name, and email belong to the same fictional character.

Step 3 — Select the container

Click on the frame of your client record (named “client” or “profil” in your layers).

Step 4 — Click Fill all

The plugin automatically fills all recognized text nodes in the container with coherent data.

[Screenshot: before/after — empty client record with grey placeholders, then the same record with all data filled in: “Camille Rousseau”, “06 45 67 89 01”, “[email protected]”, “8 impasse des Lilas, 31000 Toulouse”]

Result:

First name : Camille
Last name  : Rousseau
Email      : [email protected]
Mobile     : 06 45 67 89 01
Address    : 8 impasse des Lilas, 31000 Toulouse
SIRET      : 41816609800069

Batch mode: fill 50 rows in one click

For data tables, user lists, or card grids, batch mode is essential.

Procedure:

Select all your text nodes (Shift+click or Ctrl+A inside the frame)
Choose the category in Données FR
Click — each node receives a different value

[Screenshot: a table with 10 rows and columns First name, Last name, Email — all 30 text nodes are selected (blue highlight), the Données FR panel is open on the side]

In the Free plan, batch is limited to 10 nodes. In Premium, the limit is removed.

Conclusion: your mockups deserve French data

Lorem Ipsum and John Doe have had their day. Your French clients deserve to see mockups that look like them — with names they recognize, addresses in their city, and numbers that have the right structure.

Données FR is available for free on the Figma Community. The Free plan already covers all common use cases. The Premium plan unlocks unlimited batch mode and person coherence for complex mockups.

Install Données FR → figma.com/community/plugin/donnees-fr

Sources: INSEE — Given names file (Open Licence 2.0) · Base Adresse Nationale (Open Licence 2.0) · ARCEP — Numbering plan · ISO 13616 standard