Create Stunning Word Clouds with Python’s stylecloud in Two Lines

This article introduces stylecloud, a Python package created by data scientist Max Woolf that extends the classic wordcloud library with additional features for producing unique and attractive word clouds.

stylecloud Overview

Unlike the basic wordcloud, stylecloud can render clouds in arbitrary icon shapes (via Font Awesome), supports advanced palettes (through palettable), provides gradient options, and offers a command‑line interface.

Icon‑shaped masks of any size (Font Awesome 5.11.2)

Advanced color palettes via palettable Direct gradient control

Input from plain text files or CSV files containing words and frequencies

Command‑line interface

Two‑Line Installation & Usage

pip3 install stylecloud

After installation, a word cloud can be generated with just two lines of code:

from stylecloud import gen_stylecloud
gen_stylecloud(file_path='Trump.txt')

The example uses the speech of Donald Trump ("Trump.txt") to produce a quick word cloud.

Custom Masks

Word‑cloud aesthetics can be dramatically improved by selecting a mask icon from Font Awesome. For example, to use a dog icon:

stylecloud.gen_stylecloud(
    text=' '.join(text1),
    collocations=False,
    font_path=r'C:\Windows\Fonts\msyh.ttc',
    icon_name='fas fa-dog',
    size=400,
    output_name='wordcloud.png'
)

Brand icons such as QQ require the fab prefix (e.g., icon_name='fab fa-qq').

Palette Customisation

Colors are controlled via palettable. Changing the palette argument swaps the colour scheme:

stylecloud.gen_stylecloud(
    text=' '.join(text1),
    collocations=False,
    palette='tableau.BlueRed_6',
    font_path=r'C:\Windows\Fonts\msyh.ttc',
    icon_name='fab fa-qq',
    size=400,
    output_name='Tencent-wordcloud.png'
)

Other Useful Parameters

text: input text (best used with the function call)

file_path: path to a text or CSV file (best used via CLI)

gradient: direction of colour gradient (default: None)

size: width and height of the output image (default: 512)

icon_name: Font Awesome icon name for the mask (default: fas fa-flag)

palette: colour palette from palettable (default: cartocolors.qualitative.Bold_6)

background_color: background colour (default: white)

max_font_size: maximum font size in the cloud (default: 200)

max_words: maximum number of words (default: 2000)

stopwords: whether to filter common stopwords (default: True)

output_name: filename for the generated image (default: stylecloud.png)

font_path: path to a .ttf font file (default: built‑in Staatliches font)

random_state: seed for reproducibility

Final Example

The following code reproduces the Tencent comment word cloud shown in the article:

import stylecloud
from IPython.display import Image

stylecloud.gen_stylecloud(
    text=' '.join(text1),
    collocations=False,
    font_path=r'C:\Windows\Fonts\msyh.ttc',
    icon_name='fab fa-qq',
    size=400,
    output_name='Tencent-wordcloud.png'
)
Image(filename='Tencent-wordcloud.png')

All data files and source code are available for download at:

https://alltodata.cowtransfer.com/s/53bee58e15c54b