creating word clouds

WordleBy: Nathan Mueller

OverviewWordle is a great tool that can enhance anyone’s graphic design abilities. It’s great for t-shirts, collages, presentations, posters, or anything else you can think of. The best part is, any art you make on Wordle is your own. So you are free to use it as you wish.

Goal

Trainees will learn how to create and edit word clouds using Wordle.

ObjectivesThe students, faculty, and staff of the College of Education will be able to do the following without assistance:1) access Wordle.net on their computer.

2) create a word cloud, using Wordle, that will contain certain words bigger than others.

3) edit the font, layout, and color scheme of their word cloud, to their liking.

You may have already tried to create a world cloud using Photoshop or PowerPoint. This may be a difficult task with these programs. But with Wordle it only takes a matter of seconds to create perfect word clouds.

Step One:

Open your preferred internet browser.

I’ll be using Firefox in this presentation

Step Two:

Enter the website address in the URL bar: http://wordle.net

Step Three:

Click the “Create” option on the Wordle homepage.

Step Four (A):

Type or paste a bunch of text into the “Paste in a bunch of text:” box.

Type or paste here

Step Four (B):Wordle has a feature that allows certain words to be bigger than others. The more times a word shows up in the text that’s inputed, the bigger the word becomes in the word cloud.

For example…In the picture below: presentation, PowerPoint, instructional, etc. were more frequent in the inputed text than the smaller words.

Step Five:Once you have entered your text, click “go”

Step Six:Once you have created your world cloud you can either randomize the way it looks or you can edit it to your own preference.

Or use these option to edit it to your liking.

Ways to edit:Clicking the “language” menu you can:• remove numbers• change words to upper, lower, or mixed case• Keep or remove common words.• Wordle by default omits common words such

as: “I, and, the”

Ways to edit:Clicking the “Font” menu you can:• Change the font of your word cloud

Ways to edit:Clicking the “Layout” menu you can:1. Change the amount of words in the cloud2. put the words in alphabetical order3. have the words form a rectangle vs. a circle4. which direction the words are positioned

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Ways to edit:Clicking the “Color” menu you can:• Recolor the words with the current color scheme• Choose a new preset color scheme

Ways to edit:Clicking the “Color” menu you can:• Create your own color scheme(custom palette)• select edit palette colors, and this menu will

show up

• you can select the background and word colors

Ways to edit:Clicking the “Color” menu you can:• Once you have created your custom palette you

can tell Wordle to either use those exact colors• Or use the variation degrees, which will allow

Wordle to use more colors.

Final StepClick “Save to public gallery…”. You have the option to title your word cloud but it is not necessary.

Finally you can print your word cloud or save it and use it however you desire.

SummaryYou should now be able to:

• create a word cloud

• edit the layout and color scheme of your word cloud

AssessmentNow it’s time for you to create your own word cloud.

1. Go to wordle.net

2. Create your word cloud and edit it

3. Then you can print it or save it

Word Cloud ideasWord clouds can be used in many ways:

• presentations• posters and signs• t-shirts• scrapbooks• anything else you can think up