ASCII Art Generator
ASCII art is the oldest form of internet typography: characters arranged on a grid to spell something large enough to see from across the room. This generator renders whatever you type in three classic styles — standard filled blocks, outlined block letters, and a shadowed variant — using plain printable Unicode so the result works in terminals, READMEs, motd files and chatrooms.
How to make ASCII art from text
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1
Type a short string
Works best with 1 to 15 characters. Letters A-Z, digits and basic punctuation are supported.
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2
Pick a font style
Standard (5-row filled), block (3-row outline) or shadow (standard plus underline).
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3
Generate
Letters are looked up in a glyph table and stitched together column by column.
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4
Copy the art
Paste into a README, a CI/CD banner, a terminal welcome message or a Discord code block.
Where ASCII banners still shine
- README headers — A project name in big letters at the top of a README sets the tone immediately.
- Terminal MOTDs —
/etc/motdor the login banner on a shared server. - CLI tool splash screens — Printed once on first run, wrapped in a code block.
- CI/CD logs — An unmistakable marker in a 10,000-line build log that a stage has started.
Font comparison
| Style | Rows tall | Uses Unicode blocks | Works in monospaced fonts only |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 5 | Yes (full block U+2588) | Yes |
| Block | 3 | Yes (outline with U+2588 border) | Yes |
| Shadow | 6 | Yes (standard + upper one-eighth block U+2594) | Yes |
Keep it monospace
ASCII art only aligns when each character occupies the same width. Wrap the result in a <pre> tag, a fenced code block, or force a monospaced font. In Slack and Discord, surround with triple backticks. In Markdown, four-space indent or a fenced code block.
Things to avoid
- Mixing emoji inside ASCII art — emoji are often rendered wider than one column and break alignment.
- Auto-formatting tools that collapse runs of spaces. Check the final output in the target system before publishing.
- Very long banners — most terminals default to 80 columns, so keep to about 60 before things wrap.
Frequently Asked Questions
The idea is the same (a glyph table rendered per column), but the font set is smaller. figlet has hundreds of fonts in .flf format; this generator ships a small curated set that renders well everywhere.
Only A-Z, 0-9, space, ! and ? are in the glyph table. Lowercase letters are uppercased on input; unsupported punctuation is silently dropped.
Yes, but only inside a <pre> tag or an element with font-family: monospace and white-space: pre. In a proportional font the columns will not line up.
No — this generator is text to ASCII. For turning a photo into characters, use the dedicated Image to ASCII Art tool.
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