Tag cloud visual appearance: In many cases tag clouds are placed within a sidebar on the left or the right side of the page; therefore they usually don't have much site area to fill. Consequently, enormous fonts are used sparingly. As to colors, instead of large font sizes designers tend to use the colors. The weight of the tags isn't only determined by the font-size, but also by the color it has. The more contrast exists between the color of the tag and the background, the more active the tag is. “Passive” tags usually have colors more similar to the background color — they have to remain in the background.
Caution: the more colors are used, the more irritating tag clouds are. Visitors have to be able to gain an immediate understanding of how tag weights are distributed; a variety of colors doesn't provide any helpful information. What do the used colors stand for? Is green more important than blue? In most cases 2-3 colors should be the maximal number of colors used in a tag cloud.
As to the form of the tag cloud, most designers tend to experiment with font-sizes and colors, but anyone can experiment with background of tags as well. The background has to support the tag it stands for. “Pseudo”-buttons are quite common.

Discussions about Tag cloud visual appearance:
SANCHEZ ERIC (Adult chat rooms software) says:
From the earlier look at the structure of first generation tag clouds it is known that a tag cloud visualizes a semantic field made up of concepts referred to by labels which are applied as tags to a focus of some sort by taggers.
Based on our understanding of the structure of a tag cloud as having a single focus, the flickr for ex. cloud shows something different because it includes many focuses. The flickr all time most popular tags cloud combines all the individual tag clouds around all the individual photos in flickr into a single visualization.

WRIGHT STEPHEN (Webcam sites software) says:
Yes it is true that make a tag cloud, you have to have three elements: a focus, a tagger, and a(t least one) tag. In the most common renderings of familiar tag clouds, one or two of these elements are often implied but not shown: yet all three are always present.

KING ANDREW (Cam site business software) says:
All this is about the conception, but what about the shape and design?

SCOTT RAYMOND (Adult Cam Chat) says:
I believed a well design tag cloud (good color mix and font size ratio) can make a difference conveying information across. But nowadays, most tag clouds are ugly...

GREEN GREGORY (Adult chat sites) says:
I say that if tags clouds can be designed well, then they should be used liberally.
Wordpress recently released a version of their blogging software with better (native) support for tags. But sadly, there's few easy ways to integrate them into the blog itself, barring the use of widgets.
It'd be great to see some Web 2.0 tagging generators that would allow me to more easily use Wordpress tags without the need for a widgetized site.

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