Make your own personalised word cloud canvas

I stumbled across website wordle.net a few months ago. Wordle lets you create your own word cloud image.  I have been pondering ever since what a great gift it would be to use it to create a unique canvas for your baby’s room, or as a gift for, well, anyone. Or maybe you just want one for your own living room.

You can create your own word cloud image on wordle by entering a list of words and then changing the font, colours and the way the words are arranged.  The image is yours to use as you wish, so you can save the file you’ve created and have it printed on canvas.  (Google “print on canvas” and you’ll find any number of sites that will print your image on canvas and send it to you.  Assuming you don’t live in Tristan da Cunha*).

I don’t mind saying, I’m full of good ideas for the canvases you could create. You could create a canvas with all the characteristics or things you hope your child will aspire to (shown here is one I just whipped up), or of the things you hope will characterize the world in which your child lives.  Alternatively you can select from the gallery where word clouds already created by other users (such as Obama’s inaugural and Nobel Peace Prize speeches) may take your fancy.  Or create one from the work of a different leader or person you find inspiring.  If you like you can just enter in their website address (obviously if it’s, say, Churchill you’re after, you may have some trouble finding his website) or any site you think may be populated with material for the word cloud you’d like, as long as it has an RSS feed (or even an atom feed but I don’t know what that is so I’m leaving that out).  What about a world cloud of current events that featured in the year your child was born, or a list of all the names of relatives in the family?  All the children’s books you hope to one day read to the baby, or maybe just all your favourite books.  Favourite characters from fiction? Favourite artists? The places, art galleries, streets or cities that one day you want to visit… Stop me, I’m too good.  Add any of yours to our comments, if they’re not too good to share.

*It’s one of the most isolated places in the world. Apparently. You can look it up.

Links: www.wordle.net