Creating a Word Cloud – typography does not cloud my day
I saw links to Wordle quite a few times on different blogs before I took the time to click on over and try it. Oh my gosh, I was hooked when I started to play with this toy. It’s a site that will create an image of words in different fonts, colors and constellations for you to save. You can either paste in words or a link to a page that you want to play with. The above is a wordle word cloud created with the link to the feed of my own blog.
From the Atom-feed of my blog in August 2008.
Here’s the description of what it is from the site itself:
Wordle is a wizard. Word cloud from text as typed by the user, The prominence of the cloud depends on the words that appear frequently in the original text, which can customize the characters according to the desired style, such as fonts, layout styles and font color Images created through Wordle can be used in any format. Can be printed on paper or saved in the machine for later use.
So much fun to see what words are often used and repeated, right?
Making a word cloud
You can experiment with more or less words in your image, play with color themes or find your own favorite colors and see how they work together. The page states:
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.
That means you can’t decide what words will show up BIG and that is what’s fun about this tool. It will be a surprise to you what will come out, and when you play with your own blog/text you might be surprised about what words you’ve repeated over and over again…
†I like how the words randomly fall together. Read words two and two, and you’ve got that poetry starter that you I recently talked about.
Rarely every happiness time… what? Rarely every happiness time I’m really happy? I’m conscious of what I’m feeling? I’m blinded by tears? Oh yes, but also: what?
And…
…wannabe swirl thing, free around digging, calming days, last responsibility…
Wordle bundle from the blog post titles in my blog. It says quite a lot about what this blog is about, don’t you think?
You can also make word clouds from other peoples texts or blogs. This is what wordle created with my friend Maria’s blog:
Swedish word clouds can also be made! You can visit Maria’s blog Skapande and see more about what she writes about there. It’s one of my favorites.
If you feel like reading more about what I’ve been up to visit the Moly-x-28 blog and read my post Dawn is typography to me! :-) And go play with the online tool Wordle as well – it’s addictive!
Oh, and if you haven’t tried using a Moleskine maybe this month it’s your turn? Try your luck!
I find it interesting that of all the samples it’s the one in Swedish which I don’t understand that is the most attractive to me – possibly because in not knowing the words it becomes a purely visual pattern that I’m not trying to interpret. :) Or maybe that’s it just that I like purple!
Wow, what fun is WORDLE!!! This could become an addiction!! Thanks for sharing – love your blog – jill
Oh, nice! And with my blog too :)
How fun this looks I will have to try it.
I am totally addicted now. So much fun.
I see what you mean about the random words falling together. My favorite random phrase from the first cloud I made is “Plush homeschooler next enables childhood”
http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/226679/My_Blog_%26_Me
Awww!!!
Ser ut som en rolig leksak! Tack f?r tipset ;)