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What is Tagxedo? It’s a website that allows you to create “word clouds with style.” It’s similar to Wordle, but allows you to get creative with the shape. Basically, Tagxedo turns words -- famous speeches, news articles, slogans and themes, even your love letters -- into a visually stunning word cloud, words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text! Look at the examples below:

Tagxedo

Tim Cook: $100M Investment to Bring Mac Production to USA

Tea Party Leader Jim DeMint Resigns from Senate

Congrats! William and Kate Expecting First Child

Jimi Hendrix

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With Tagxedo, you don’t have to create an account! Just simply visit the website and start creating.

To get started, look for this box! You’ll have options to paste a URL, Twitter ID, Del.icio.us ID, Look up news stories, Search, or do an RSS lookup. If you just have text that you want to paste in, just click “Start Now.”

To start off, it’ll ask you to pick a shape, orientation, font & theme. Once you click submit, you will be given more options to change this. Just make selections to get a starting image.

I’m going to create a word cloud about USC for this tutorial. I’ll type USC into the News field - make some design selections and click “Submit.” If you click on “Start Now”, you still also be taken to the same Tagxedo Creator Editor window (pictured below).

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Learning the Editor:

When you click on Load, this will allow you to either upload a file, input a webpage, or paste your own text into the field where it says “Enter Text”! See the pop up window below:

Save/Share will allow you to export your word cloud as an image, create a web URL for it, print it, create a thumbnail, and other advanced options that you can explore.

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If you click on the arrow next to Theme, you’ll be give a list of color themes to choose from. For this word cloud, I’m going to click “The Note” because it matches USC colors. You can also add your own custom themes by click “Add Themes...”

You also have the options to select fonts. You can select more than one font by clicking on the “X”s. You can “Toggle” and have the program select random fonts. There is also an option to use local fonts or add fonts.

The roundabout arrows will cause the program to randomly choose a color, font, layout, etc. It will also reload your word cloud with the new option that you’ve selected.

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You can change the orientation of your text - where it be random, horizontal, vertical, etc.

You can also adjust the shape by selected pre-formed shapes in their menu. Or you can load your own image. For my word cloud, I’ve uploaded an image of California with the SC logo next to it. Make your own image to fit what you want to convey with your word cloud. See next page to see how I

did that.

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I uploaded an image by clicking “Add Image...” and then you can edit how your image is layered with words by adjusting the settings below. You can see a preview of how your word cloud will look. Once you like how it looks, click Accept!

Note: It’s best to have an image that is not too overly complicated.

History will show you the progression of your word cloud. You can also click on a previous version of your word cloud and revert back to it.

Word & Layout options allows you to customize your tagxedo even more! You can edit out words or customize the layout further. Explore this menu to see what you can do!

Tagxedo offers many ways to share your word cloud! Don’t forget there is also the Share/Save option at the top.

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I went from this original word cloud to creating an image that expresses what the text expresses.

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This tells you what shape you’re using and its size=. In this case, I’ve uploaded an image called “Example.jpg.”

The font that is currently being used.

The current theme being used.

See your word cloud fullscreen.

Zoom into your word cloud.