Q:I love your stuff! Obviously you are a nerdfighter! Tell us more about you since you dont really seem to make the average word cloud

Anonymous

I’m going to work my way backwards through your ask. (Warnings: I’m tired, so bear with strange sentence structures. Also, this may get a bit long.)

I’ve always really loved/been fascinated with typography specifically as a form of art. I also like statistics, numbers, and graphs. Word clouds seem to be a natural meshing of the two! However, I’m rather quickly moving away from traditional word clouds to a sort of word cloud inspired form of typographical art. I still consider them word clouds, but they’re definitely not average anymore! I’m always looking for ways to improve them and I love getting critiques and feedback. If you have any suggestions, you know where my ask box is.

Now onto the more about me bit.

I’m not entirely sure where to begin, so I’ll just pick a random spot in the middle. I’m a student looking into chemical engineering or chemistry or perhaps some form of theoretical chemistry. I really, really love chemistry. I’ve been self teaching myself the basic principles behind quantum mechanics and general relativity throughout the last year and a half, which is why I love Strange Charm so very, very much! It just… charmed me ;)

I recently acquired an amazing girlfriend, also a nerdfighter (remember, we only hug and touch!), and she was originally the reason why I joined tumblr, although I’m pretty happy now that I’m here. When I arrived I noticed a lack of fandom word clouds and decided that that wouldn’t do. And here we are.

I love reading, rainy days, and I play the cello. I have for… oh… 8 or nearly 9 years now? I enjoy most forms of music; on a single playlist you’ll find Beethoven, Hank, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Jeremy Larson, Regina Spektor, and various musicals all sitting comfortably next to one another. I’ve always meant to participate in NaNoWriMo, but never gotten around to it. Maybe this year.

That’s a good start. Apologies if that’s not what you meant by “tell us more about you.”

I’ve been a nerdfighter for twoish years now. I read Looking For Alaska first, then discovered Hank, and then learned that John and Hank were brothers! To quote one of my friends, “it was magical.” Paper Towns is probably my favorite book, but TFiOS comes close to toppling it.

I love hearing that people enjoy my work. It means a lot to me! Thank you for your interest and if you have any ideas or further questions, you know where to find me!

“You told me once that you weren’t a hero… um.. there were times I didn’t even think you were human, but, let me tell you this: you were the best man and human… human being I’ve ever known, and no-one will ever convince me that you told me a lie, that’s… uh. There. I was so alone, and I owe you so much. Look, please, there’s just one more thing, one more thing, one more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don’t. Be. Dead. Would you do that, just for me, just… stop it. Stop this!” Something I’m working on making better. Thoughts?
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“You told me once that you weren’t a hero… um.. there were times I didn’t even think you were human, but, let me tell you this: you were the best man and human… human being I’ve ever known, and no-one will ever convince me that you told me a lie, that’s… uh. There.

I was so alone, and I owe you so much.

Look, please, there’s just one more thing, one more thing, one more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don’t. Be. Dead. Would you do that, just for me, just… stop it. Stop this!”

Something I’m working on making better. Thoughts?

Q:I'm a complete noob when it comes to these things, so forgive me for my silly question. How/with what program do you make your typography stuff (like the strange charm thingy). I'd really like to try my hand at it but I don't know where to start! Thanks in advance :)

Anonymous

Not silly at all!

You can make really quick and painless traditional word clouds online through services such as Wordle and WordItOut (google ‘em!), but my favorite site—that I’ve discovered thus far—is Tagxedo.

Tagxedo gives you a lot of options (custom shapes, fonts, and color choices!) along with detailed control, but also has the downside of not really explaining how to use all of the tools. Just play around with it for a while and I’m sure you’ll figure it out! If you have any specific questions feel free to ask again.

From Tagxedo I save multiple unicolor images (just shades of red, like the IOU Apples, yellow, blue, etc.) and then open them all up in Photoshop and do post production work where I borrow colored sections that I want from each unicolor image and combine them into a full multicolored image. From there I can rearrange words to some extent, further mess with color choice, add effects, or whatever else you can figure out what to do with Photoshop.

I hope that answers your question!

(And here’s a quick word cloud made of my answer in the colors of my elephant.)

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