An ASCII art generator turns text into big letters drawn with keyboard
characters, the banners you see at the top of a terminal, a README or a code
comment. Type below, pick a FIGlet font, and copy the result or download it as
a .txt file.
Loading the Standard font…ASCII art is drawn in your browser and nothing is uploaded. Press Enter to start a new line of art.
The art scrolls sideways on a phone rather than wrapping, because a wrapped line of ASCII art is a broken picture. Press Enter in the text box to start a new line of art, which is also the quickest way to make a wide banner fit.
What the fonts look like
The same word, meow, in four of the fonts:
Standard
_ __ ___ ___ _____ __
| '_ ` _ \ / _ \/ _ \ \ /\ / /
| | | | | | __/ (_) \ V V /
|_| |_| |_|\___|\___/ \_/\_/
Slant
____ ___ ___ ____ _ __
/ __ `__ \/ _ \/ __ \ | /| / /
/ / / / / / __/ /_/ / |/ |/ /
/_/ /_/ /_/\___/\____/|__/|__/
ANSI Shadow
███╗ ███╗███████╗ ██████╗ ██╗ ██╗
████╗ ████║██╔════╝██╔═══██╗██║ ██║
██╔████╔██║█████╗ ██║ ██║██║ █╗ ██║
██║╚██╔╝██║██╔══╝ ██║ ██║██║███╗██║
██║ ╚═╝ ██║███████╗╚██████╔╝╚███╔███╔╝
╚═╝ ╚═╝╚══════╝ ╚═════╝ ╚══╝╚══╝
Calvin S
┌┬┐┌─┐┌─┐┬ ┬
│││├┤ │ ││││
┴ ┴└─┘└─┘└┴┘How wide each font is
Width decides where your ASCII text will fit. This is hello world on one
line in every font the generator offers, in columns (characters across) and
rows.
| Font | Rows | Columns | Fits 80 columns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calvin S | 3 | 32 | Yes |
| Small | 4 | 43 | Yes |
| Doom | 6 | 51 | Yes |
| Standard | 5 | 52 | Yes |
| Big | 6 | 52 | Yes |
| Slant | 5 | 56 | Yes |
| Shadow | 4 | 63 | Yes |
| Graffiti | 6 | 67 | Yes |
| Banner | 7 | 73 | Yes |
| Larry 3D | 7 | 86 | No |
| ANSI Regular | 5 | 87 | No |
| ANSI Shadow | 6 | 88 | No |
| Ghost | 9 | 111 | No |
| Star Wars | 6 | 113 | No |
| 3D-ASCII | 7 | 117 | No |
A rough rule: Standard spends about five columns per letter, so a single line of about 16 letters is as much as fits an 80-column terminal. The generator shows the exact size above the art and warns when it goes past 80 or 120 columns.
How to use it
- Type or paste your text. Short is better: a name, a project, a word.
- Pick a Font. Only that font is downloaded, so trying a few is quick.
- Check the size next to ASCII art. If the width warning shows, press Enter between words or pick a narrower font.
- Tap Copy, or .txt to save it as a text file.
How text to ASCII art works
A FIGlet font is a text file with a small drawing of every character, each one the same number of rows tall. Drawing a word is mostly putting those drawings side by side, row by row.
The part that makes FIGlet art look good is smushing. Each font carries
rules for when two neighbouring letters may overlap: two | edges can merge
into one, a / next to a \ can share a column, an underscore can tuck under
a slash. That is why k and i share a stroke in coding.kitty in the generator
instead of sitting with a gap between them, and why the same word in two fonts
can come out at very different widths.
Everything else is plain text. There are no colours or images, so the art survives anywhere text does, as long as it is shown in a monospace font.
Where ASCII art goes wrong
- Proportional fonts. In a font where
iis narrower thanm, the columns drift and the letters fall apart. Paste into a code block, a terminal or a monospace editor. On Discord, Slack, GitHub and Reddit, wrap it in three backticks. - Wrapping. A line longer than the window wraps onto the next row and scrambles the picture. Keep terminal art to 80 columns, or split it across lines of text.
- Trailing spaces. The generator trims the spaces FIGlet pads every line with, so pasting into an editor that strips or flags them changes nothing.
- Backslashes in code. Most fonts use
\. Inside a string in JavaScript, Python or C, a backslash starts an escape, so\nin your art becomes a line break. Put the art in a comment, a raw string (r"..."in Python,String.rawin JavaScript) or a separate text file. - Screen readers. Art is read out character by character. When it is a heading or a logo, keep the plain words next to it, and mark it decorative where you can.
- Missing characters. Emoji and most symbols have no drawing in a FIGlet font and are left out. The generator lists any it skipped.
Where people use ASCII text
- A banner printed when a Bash script or a command-line tool starts.
- The top of a README, inside a code block so GitHub keeps it monospace.
- A section heading in a long config file or source file, in a comment.
- The server message of the day (
/etc/motd) you see after logging in over SSH; the Linux commands cheat sheet covers editing it. - A Discord or Slack message, in a code block.
Related tools
- Fancy Text Generator restyles text with Unicode letters (bold, script, bubble) that stay one line tall and work in a bio.
- Glitch Text Generator piles marks on each letter for creepy zalgo text.
- Kaomoji has small text faces, including cats, to sign off a banner.
- Case Converter changes text to UPPER CASE first: capitals have no descenders, so the banner comes out even.
Common questions
What is an ASCII art generator?
An ASCII art generator turns text into big letters drawn out of ordinary keyboard characters like slashes, underscores and pipes, so a word becomes a banner several lines tall. Because the result is plain text rather than an image, you can paste it into a terminal, a code comment, a README, a chat or an email and it keeps its shape anywhere a monospace font is used.
What is FIGlet?
FIGlet is a program from 1991 that prints text in large letters made of other characters, and a FIGlet font is the file that says how to draw each letter. The name comes from Frank, Ian and Glenn's letters. Fonts like Standard, Slant, Big and Doom are FIGlet fonts, and this text to ASCII art tool draws with the same fonts using figlet.js, a JavaScript version of FIGlet.
Why does my ASCII art look broken after I paste it?
ASCII art only lines up in a monospace font, where every character is the same width. Pasted into a place that uses a proportional font, such as a normal chat message or a word processor, the columns drift apart. Put it in a code block (three backticks on Discord, Slack, GitHub and Reddit) or set the font to a monospace one. If the lines wrap, the window is too narrow for the art; see the width warning above the output.
How wide can ASCII art be for a terminal?
Most terminals open 80 columns wide, and 80 is the width code comments and README files are usually read at, so art up to 80 columns fits nearly everywhere. The generator shows the width of your art and warns when it goes past 80 or 120. To make it narrower, put words on separate lines or pick a narrower font such as Small or Calvin S.
Why are some characters missing from my ASCII art?
Each FIGlet font only has drawings for the characters its author made, usually the English alphabet, digits and punctuation, and often accented letters like é. Emoji and most other symbols have no drawing, so they are left out, and the generator lists which characters were skipped.
Is ANSI Shadow real ASCII?
Not strictly. ANSI Shadow, ANSI Regular and Calvin S draw with Unicode block and box-drawing characters, which look solid and clean in a modern terminal but are outside the 128 ASCII characters. They work in any terminal or editor that uses UTF-8, which is nearly all of them now. For somewhere that only takes plain ASCII, pick Standard, Slant, Big, Small or Doom.
Is anything I type here sent to a server?
No. The art is drawn in your browser and the text box is not submitted anywhere; the fonts are downloaded to your browser as you pick them. The site records that the tool was used, how many characters went in, which font was picked and how wide the art came out, so we know which tools are worth building next. The text itself is never part of that.