In an age of 4K video and photorealistic graphics, there's something charming about art made from @ symbols, slashes, and parentheses. ASCII art isn't just nostalgia—it's a creative constraint that produces surprisingly expressive results.
What Is ASCII Art?
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) art uses the 95 printable characters from the ASCII character set to create images. These characters—letters, numbers, and symbols like @, #, *, and /—combine to form pictures when viewed as a whole.
/\_/\
( o.o )
> ^ <
/| |\
(_| |_)
A Brief History
The Typewriter Era
ASCII art's ancestors date back to typewriter art in the late 1800s. Typists created images using letters and symbols, limited by the fixed-width fonts of typewriters.
Early Computing
In the 1960s and 70s, computers had no graphics capabilities. Programmers used line printers to create images from text—the first true ASCII art. The famous "Mona Lisa" in ASCII dates to this era.
BBS and Usenet Days
The 1980s and 90s saw ASCII art flourish on Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and Usenet. With no way to share images, users created elaborate signatures, banners, and artwork purely in text.
Modern Revival
Today, ASCII art lives on in code comments, terminal applications, startup banners, and as a deliberate aesthetic choice. Reddit communities and Discord servers keep the tradition alive.
Types of ASCII Art
Line Art
Simple drawings using lines, slashes, and basic characters. Great for diagrams and simple figures.
Solid Art
Uses characters of varying "density" (@, #, %, .) to create shading and depth. Can reproduce photographs.
Text Banners
Large decorative text created from smaller characters:
_ _ _ _ | | | | ___| | | ___ | |_| |/ _ \ | |/ _ \ | _ | __/ | | (_) | |_| |_|\___|_|_|\___/
Character Density for Shading
When converting images to ASCII, different characters create different "darkness" levels:
- Darkest: @, #, M, W
- Medium: %, &, 8, B
- Light: /, \, |, -, +
- Lightest: ., :, ', ` (and space)
By mapping pixel brightness to character density, you can create surprisingly detailed ASCII reproductions of photographs.
Creating ASCII Art
By Hand
The traditional method. Use a monospace font, plan your design on graph paper, and type character by character. Time-consuming but satisfying.
With Generators
Modern tools convert images or text to ASCII automatically. They analyze brightness values and substitute appropriate characters. Results can be tweaked manually.
Font Generators
FIGlet and similar tools convert plain text into ASCII art banners using predefined "fonts"—collections of character arrangements for each letter.
Pro Tip: ASCII art only looks right in monospace fonts (like Courier, Consolas, or Monaco). In proportional fonts, the alignment breaks.
ASCII Art in Modern Development
- CLI tool banners: Many command-line tools display ASCII logos on startup
- Code comments: Decorative section dividers in source code
- Easter eggs: Hidden ASCII art in software and websites
- Terminal games: Roguelikes and text adventures
- README files: GitHub project logos in ASCII
Create ASCII Art Text
Convert text to ASCII art banners with multiple font styles.
Open ASCII Art Generator →The Appeal of Constraints
ASCII art thrives because of its limitations, not despite them. Working within constraints—only 95 characters, monospace alignment, no color—forces creativity. The best ASCII artists see letters and symbols differently, finding faces in parentheses and landscapes in slashes.
In a world of infinite digital possibility, sometimes the most creative choice is to limit yourself to what a 1970s terminal could display.