A brief history of ASCII art
ASCII art predates the graphical web by decades. In the 1960s and 70s, computer terminals could only display characters — no images, no graphics. Artists and programmers discovered they could arrange letters, numbers, and punctuation to create pictures and decorative text.
Figlet (a program for making large letters out of ordinary text) was created in 1991 and remains the standard tool for text-based ASCII banners. The fonts used here — Standard, Slant, Shadow, Doom, and others — are the original figlet fonts, now used everywhere from terminal welcome screens to GitHub READMEs.
Where ASCII art is used today
- Code headers — section dividers and file headers in source code and config files
- Terminal applications — welcome screens, CLI tool logos, startup banners
- README files — project names and logos in GitHub and GitLab repositories
- Discord and Slack — announcements, channel headers, bot responses (in code blocks)
- Social media — Twitter/X bios, retro-aesthetic posts, game-related content
- Easter eggs — hidden messages in browser console outputs and page source code
Tips for best results
- Shorter is better — a single word or short phrase looks best; long sentences wrap awkwardly
- Use monospace fonts when pasting — ASCII art only looks correct in Courier, Menlo, or any fixed-width font
- Try the Small or Mini font — for fitting ASCII art into tight spaces like comments or inline text
- Discord/Slack trick — wrap your output in triple backticks (```code```) to preserve spacing