Follow Cool Infographics
Need infographics.
Designer | Author | Instructor | Speaker
FREE Sample Chapter
Word Clouds
Word Clouds are a visual representation of the frequency of words within a given body of text. Often they are used to visualize the frequency of words within large text documents, qualitative research data, public speeches, website tags, End User License Agreements (EULAs) and unstructured data sources.
Flourish.studio
Flourish.studio (owned by Canva) has both free and paid levels of accounts. With a free account, you can create either simple or multi-colored word clouds using your own text data. You have full control of the “many” customization options, and can export the final word cloud as a PNG, JPG or SVG image file. You can even add them directly to Canva presentations.
Wordclouds.com
Wordclouds.com is a free online word cloud generator and tag cloud creator. Wordclouds.com works on your PC, Tablet or smartphone. Paste text, upload a document or open an URL to automatically generate a word- or tag cloud. Customize your cloud with shapes, themes, colors and fonts. You can also edit the word list, cloud size and gap size. Wordclouds.com can also generate clickable word clouds with links (image map). When you are satisfied with the result, save the image and share it online.
Creative Fabrica ShapeCloud
Creative Fabrica ShapeCloud is an online word art generator that enables you to create amazing and unique word clouds custom shapes using your own text data and then select your desired shape, font, and color, then download your design for free. Free users can export up to 5 designs.
TagCrowd is a web application for visualizing word frequencies in any text by creating word clouds, and was created by Daniel Steinbock while a PhD student at Stanford University. You can enter text in three ways: paste text, upload a text file or enter the URL of a web page to visualize.
Tagxedo turns words into a visually stunning word cloud, words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text. Start with any text and even use images to create a custom shape.
WordArt.com is an online word cloud art creator that enables you to create amazing and unique word cloud art with ease. You can customize every bit of word cloud art including: words, shapes, fonts, colors, layouts and more!
Reesha Word Cloud Generator
The R eesha Word Cloud Generator is a free app that works on iOS and Android. The in-app purchase to the Pro Edition will remove the watermark, remove ads, unlock the full features and give your the rights to sell any derivative designs. Enter your words, and the app will nicely shuffle them inside a bunch of shapes and with different colors. You can export the word cloud as a PNG file.
WordCloud.app
WordCloud.app is a multi-platform tool that’s available online, mobile apps, Figma and Miro dashboards. Load your own text, pick a color scheme, pick a shape, select fonts and export. Free and paid features. Now includes an AI-powered word cloud tool.
WordCloud.pro
WordCloud.pro has both free and paid plans. You can upload your own text data, choose a pre-designed shape to fit your word cloud, and download the final design. A personal license allows you to download a low-resolution image for free and allows to use the picture only for personal non-commercial purposes. Standard and advanced licenses allow you to download high-resolution images and use pictures for any purpose, including commercial.
ToCloud is an online free word cloud generator that uses word frequency as the weight. Based on the text from a webpage or pasted text, the generated word cloud of a page gives a quick understanding of how the page is optimized for certain words.
WordItOut is the word cloud generator that gives you control with many custom settings. Free to use and no sign up required!
Word Cloud Generator
Word Cloud Generator is developed by Jason Davies using JavaScript and provides a few customization options for scale, word orientation, font and the number of words from your original text to be included in the word cloud.
Vizzlo Word Cloud Generator
Vizzlo is an online data visualization tool, and creating word clouds is one of its capabilities. Vizzlo does have offer word cloud creation for free users, but it includes the Vizzlo watermark. You have to be on one of the paid accounts to remove the watermark.
Word Cloud Maker
Word Cloud Maker is an advanced online FREE word cloud generator that enables you to upload a background photo or select a design from the gallery upon which your word cloud art will be superimposed. You can simply download the word clouds to your local computer in multiple formats such as vector svg, png, jpg, jpeg, pdf and more. You can use it in your content for free.
Word Cloud Generator (Google Docs)
Word Cloud Generator is a free Google Docs add-on for creating word clouds based on your Google Documents. Richard Byrne has a good video tutorial that demonstrates how to quickly create a word cloud in Google Documents.
Infogram Word Clouds
Infogram is an online chart maker used to design infographics, presentations, reports and more. It’s free to create an account, and word clouds are one of their charting options. You have to upgrade to a paid plan to remove the Infogram logo and get access to download options for your designs.
WordSift was created to help teachers manage the demands of vocabulary and academic language in their text materials. Options are very similar to Jason Davies’ Word Cloud Maker (above) but is easier to use.
MonkeyLearn AI WordCloud Generator
The MonkeyLearn WordCloud Generator is a free tool that uses Artificial Intelligence to generate word clouds from your source text, and automatically detects multiple word combinations.
Wordle (discontinued)
Wordle was a Java-based tool for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide, created by Jonathan Feinberg. Wordle has been discontinued and is no longer under development. You can download and use the final version of the desktop apps for Windows v0.2 and Mac v0.2 . These desktop apps require that JAVA is also installed on your computer.
Text Visualization: Word Clouds
Data visualization is usually related to graphical representations of numbers, but when the information to be displayed is textual you can use a word cloud.
Available in:
Data visualization is usually related to graphical representations of numbers, which allow for more precise analysis of information and identification of trends. But when the information displayed is textual, there are tools to visualize this type of information, and one of the best known is the word cloud .
What is a word cloud?
It is a graphical representation or image of a series of keywords or tags organized by color and size to form a figure. It is also known as a tag cloud or tag cloud.
Source: Word cloud created using Words Cloud from the Datasketch home page .
How is a word cloud used?
The word cloud allows you to identify the most relevant topics at a glance. It is often used in blogs and websites to help users find information more easily.
Another less common but tremendously helpful use for data journalism is its use as a resource to display textual information in articles.
Usage example: New York Times
In mid-February and in the wake of various global events, the Morning Consult Company surveyed 2200 Americans. They asked about the perception of inflation in the country and its perceived products.
According to the Gallup Group Index , inflation was one of the three biggest concerns at the moment, above unemployment.
The New York Times collects the results of this research and shows it using word clouds in its article “ Where 2200 Americans Have Noticed Inflation ”. They analyzed the most repeated terms in the participants' open-ended responses.
We should note that these data do not capture price increases due to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Still, they identified that the answers somehow show that citizens and states perceive inflation differently. According to the media, dozens of participants pointed out that inflation is in all products, but the most concerning areas are fuel and food. The image highlights in orange the categories that represent food and allows us to see the relevance of this issue.
Source: Bacon, Gas, and Essentials: Where 2,200 Americans Have Noticed Inflation | The New York Times .
Inflation affects most of those who have the least, and being clear about the areas that most concern people in their day-to-day lives can help make policy decisions and identify areas of impact that will help improve people’s lives.
It is transparent and straightforward visual information. It’s not explained in text, but graphically. It’s handy for creating relationships between concepts. You often don’t have a global vision of what terms you can use. So another key is to understand that it helps you identify words that you can relate to, generating new concepts.
Recommendations when creating word clouds
This tool has a great potential to show the most salient information of a text. For that, we must:
🎨 Explain what the colors mean in our visualizations.
The colors chosen can mean many things, such as the predominance of a term in the text, the relationship between different representations (in the example above, all the words in orange are food), or can be random, and the reader should know them beforehand.
📋 Explain what the differences in the size of the terms mean.
Usually, the size depends on how regularly the label appears, but this is not always the case, so explaining the size change can help our readers understand the text better.
Displays it
🔢 Add the number of times the word appeared
Differences in size and color can lead to errors in interpretation, so adding the number of times the term has repeated makes it easier to get an accurate picture of its importance.
✍🏽 Use only one type of word. It is not usually advisable to mix verbs with nouns or adjectives, as their meanings vary and lead to confusion.
🌀 Check that the words in your cloud make sense and, if necessary, eliminate empty terms such as articles or determiners.
3 tools to create your word cloud
We propose some tools to create tag clouds that we like the most and do not require downloading. We do not show them in any specific order of preference. You will have to try them and select the one you like the most.
Words cloud
Words cloud is one of the easiest tools from Datasketch. It’s free, and you only need to register. It allows you to create word clouds from sample texts, copy and paste, upload a file (doc/txt/pdf) or use a URL. Moreover, you can work in different languages. The options to customize your visualization are extensive. Among them, you can choose the shape, the color palette, the slant of the words, remove common words, or the font you want to use.
WordItOut identifies the most frequently occurring words and highlights them. It is pretty simple and allows some customization.
Word Art allows you to customize your word clouds with a wide range of image templates. If you are looking for originality in your clouds, this is probably a good option. It also allows you to add the word list directly in the tool and pick the shape, font, layout, and style.
IMAGES
VIDEO