Words as Pictures: The Wordle Way

A few years ago, while stumbling about on the Internet, I discovered a very creative site, and I think it’s one of the best modern ways to use words in visual art (besides web design, of course).

Wordle is a Java-enabled way to make blog entries, feeds, articles, pasted-in text, or even Delicious tags into a graphic. Now, I know that doing graphic arrangements of words is not new to the world of visual art, but Wordle does it in a particularly interesting fashion, with the largest words being the most used in whatever text sample it gets.

Some Personalized Examples

For some beginning examples, I used Wordle to do a couple of graphics based on two large samples of my writing, below:


Based on my webmistress page
It amuses me that “Grits” and “driveway” are two of the biggest words…LOL


Based on Crooked Glasses’s RSS Feed
You can tell the gaming post was prevalent on my feed this particular day. Haha

In both these cases, I chose the font color and style, as well as the background color. I also chose how the words spread themselves across the image. All of these tools and many more options are available to you through the Wordle interface–play around with it and see what you like best!

Some “Famous Poetry” Wordles

I also used Wordle to make word pictures with a couple of my favorite poems, seen below:


From the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe


From the poem “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

Wordles as Wall Art/Gifts

Making a Wordle would be a fun thing to do with a particularly inspirational monologue, poem, or prose piece you like–print it large and frame it to put it on your wall, or just stick it on your bulletin board with tacks and call it a day. Anything that gets it into your line of sight on a daily basis would work well.

Also, if you wanted to give a Wordle as a gift, you could easily copy in the text of something a family member or friend has written, and transform their writing into evocative visual art that they can enjoy. Choose favorite colors for the words, arrange it all for best effect–it can make a beautiful personalized gift.

You could even write in just random positive words that describe the gift recipient into the text box provided. Just make sure the words that you want to be largest are there multiple times, and you’ve got it! Almost anything that uses words could become a word graphic using Wordle…you might come up with a totally new way to use it, too!

Try It On Your Own Writing!

Take the largest sample of writing you have, or the most vibrantly written work you have. Anything you want. It could even be a long Facebook status. Copy in your text, and see what Wordle can do for you. It’s not only a fun timewaster, but a great tool for design and art, too. 🙂

One thought on “Words as Pictures: The Wordle Way”

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