I’m sure that you’ve noticed an increase in the presence of text collages on the web lately. At least once you’ve probably been impressed by a text collage, no matter if it was under the form of a word cloud or another custom shape. It’s something simple, but eye-catching at the same time, which is why a lot of blogs are using them to impress their visitors. Usually you’ll see these text collages addressing a topic, like fitness, SEO or marketing, depending on the niche promoted by the blogger. But nowadays technology has gone even further and you can do a text collage in any shape you want, like a heart, a dog or even a book.
Visual Poetry
First of all we have to admit that the name of this app is really cool – you’re not creating a text collage, you’re creating visual poetry…nice! Second of all, it has raving reviews in the App Store. You have 24 symbols to choose from or you can draw new ones if you want, which gives you a well-deserved freedom. If you’re a creative person and you’re into world collages, then you have to be careful with this app as it can be addictive and you can lose track of time while playing with it on your iPad or iPhone.
Besides creating your own shapes, you can even control every word, making it larger and coloring it so that it stands out from the rest. You just have to click on it and the options will pop-up – imagine that you can create thousands of combinations of fonts, colors and positions. Combine this with the fact that you can create your own shape and you have yourself the heaven of word collages. By default, the app has the following: 18 templates, 10 fonts and 24 shapes.
It sounds like a lot of fun, but unfortunately only Apple fans will be able to enjoy this because the app is available only for iPhones and iPads.
Details: For iOS only, $1.99 to buy
Read Also: 5 Best Picture Collage Maker Software
Tagxedo
The first thing to stand out in a word collage app is the name and people in this industry seem to get that, since they find really cool names for their software. Just like Visual Poetry, Tagxedo is proof of that. But, moving on, the entire application is cool, not just the name. This is the beta version, which means that everything is free for now, but when they’ll finish the beta the most advanced options will be available just for premium users. But look on the bright side – you can enjoy it for now.
There are way too many functionalities and options to name here; needless to say you that you can do pretty much anything with it. You can load any image and create a shape out of it so the possibilities are endless. You can check their Facebook page to see fans artwork, or you can access the 150 slides guide on their site.
But the coolest part is that it’s very easy to use for bloggers – you have the option to insert your RSS feed link, your Twitter ID or even your link and it’ll create one for you. Imagine that you can make a word collage for every article you write just by pasting the link and waiting for a couple of seconds.
Details: Web app, Free for now
WordItOut
In WordItOut, you don’t have as many options and possibilities available, but there are more than enough to help you create a good looking collage. The start is simple, you just have to paste the text or the words and it will automatically create a new collage. After that you can tweak and adjust – font style, font size, and number of colors, blending, layout and a couple others. As you can see, you have all the basics without having to install anything.
The coolest part of WordItOut is that it offers you tips & tricks – for example I selected a font size of 50 to 60, which is pretty big, and he’s saying “try increasing the size of the word cloud or decreasing the size of the text.” So if you’re having problems and you can’t do it exactly as you want, check out these tips since they’re pretty helpful.
Unfortunately you don’t have any shapes available and you can’t add one, but instead of this they have a target, which is the center of the cloud. Besides that it has a button called redraw which does exactly what it says – it will redraw your cloud, with the existing settings, but it changes the words placement, colors and sizes. You can shuffle the pack until you find something that is good enough for you and then you just have to click the save button and you’re done.
Details: Web app, Free
No matter if you’re an amateur and you just like to have some fun by creating word collages or you’re a professional looking to create these for businesses, one of the above apps will be enough for you to do your job. Visual Poetry is easy to use and very intuitive and you can use it on the go, since you can download it on your IPhone/IPad; Tagxedo is taking this form of art to a whole new level with endless possibilities while WordItOut is for people that are looking to get the job done fast, but with good results. Let us know what your thoughts are and what your favorite app is!
TagCrowd
Without giving a lot of options and features, TagCrowd is perfect if you’re looking for a tag cloud generator.
You just have to paste your text and click on visualize in order to see a first version of the collage. After that you can optimize it for a better version; change the number of words showed and their frequency, select if you want to group similar words or if you want to convert everything to lowercase. If you have a longer text and there are a couple of words you don’t want to see in the cloud, you can just type them in a box and TagCrowd will automatically exclude them.
Unfortunately you won’t be able to create the most beautiful word cloud with this app, as you don’t have a lot of options regarding its looks and you can’t shape it. It will basically put words next to each other, with some highlighted words (if they’re mentioned more), but it will do the job.
Details: Web app, Free
Wordle
Another awesome word cloud generator that offers tons of useful features for free. You can create a text collage instantly by providing the text or URL. Once the word cloud is created, you can customize its font, layout, and color easily from the menu. There are 2 rare features that makes Wordle stands out from the crowd: undo and language settings. Undo allows you to revert to your previous action that probably messed up your gorgeous word cloud. In the language settings, you can remove common words based on your text language, remove numbers, guess case for each word, change text cases, etc.
The only downside of this word cloud creator is its performance. It is a bit sluggish but still acceptable. You can try to open the app as a standalone app by clicking the Open In Window button, which seems to work better for me.
Details: Web app, Free
Tagul
Tagul allows you to upload your own collage shape, a feature that most word cloud generators don’t offer. Apart from that, there are tons of interesting shapes provided, as shown in the screenshot below. After adding words and shapes, you can customize its fonts, layout, colours, and animations. Lastly, free user can download the word cloud in PNG file format, share it, or embed it into your website.
Registration is compulsory to start creating free text collages. To export the word cloud in vector and high quality formats or create word clouds for commercial purposes, a premium subscription starting from $7.95/month is required.
Details: Web App, Free with limited features, $7.95++/month to subscribe
ABCYa! Word Clouds for Kids!
As you can probably tell, this is a word cloud maker for kids. Nothing fancy about this web app, but it serves its purpose well. Once you have pasted the words, customize your word cloud by changing word count, turning word filter on or off, randomizing, changing color schemes, selecting layouts, and choosing fonts. Once you are done, save the image as JPEG format. A handy tool for parents, teachers, and educators.
A word cloud mobile app is also available for iOS users, which makes creating text collages on iPad or iPhone easier.
Details: Web app (iOS app available), Free
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