ASCII art

ASCII art builds images from the 95 printable ASCII characters (codes 32-126). The technique dates to the 1966 "SNOOPY" calendar printed on line printers, years before computer screens displayed graphics. Artists exploit character density - "@" and "#" appear darker than "." and " " - to simulate shading in monospaced grids.

Try our ASCII art generator to convert text into block-character banners, or the image-to-ASCII converter to transform photos into text art. Browse ready-made pieces in the ASCII art gallery, emoticons collection (including the classic shrug and table flip), and one-liner art.