Words, words, words ...

Words just excite me. In text or in speech the way that words shape thoughts and actions have always been a joy. Calligrams, words which explain themselves by their shape, size, colour and juxtaposition have certainly inspired many poets and the idea of creating shapes and patterns with words really does appeal.

I have just come across a Web 2.0 app that takes this to a creative place that I feel is stimulating and different. It is Wordle.

This is what they say about themselves:

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. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.