ASCII Art Generator

Type below and your ASCII banner appears instantly. Flip through 50 FIGlet fonts with ‹ ›, then copy it plain, as a chat code block, or wrapped as a code comment.

Press Enter to copy. Paste inside a code block so it stays aligned.

Output
Standard 44/50
Loading font…
Options

See your text in every font

Renders your text (first 16 characters) in all 50 fonts. Tap a preview to use that font.

How FIGlet squeezes letters together

Every FIGlet font stores each letter as a small rectangle of characters. The interesting part is what happens where two rectangles meet. Switch between the three layout modes and watch the banner shrink.

Full width: every letter keeps its whole box, blank columns included. Nothing touches.

24 columns wide

Standard font
  _   _   _____  __   __
 | | | | | ____| \ \ / /
 | |_| | |  _|    \ V /
 |  _  | | |___    | |
 |_| |_| |_____|   |_|

Smushing follows six rules written into the font header: equal characters merge, underscores give way to other border characters, brackets of different kinds collapse into a |, and so on. That is why the same word can be 30% narrower in smushed mode without losing legibility.

Where ASCII banners actually get used

  • Top of a source file or script. A banner with the project name makes a long file easy to spot when scrolling. Pick the // or # wrapper so the code still runs.
  • README files and CLIs. Many command-line tools print a banner on start. Paste the output inside a fenced code block in Markdown so GitHub keeps the spacing.
  • Discord, Slack and forums. Wrap the banner in three backticks ``` on each side; otherwise the chat font breaks the alignment.
  • Server message of the day. Linux prints /etc/motd after login – a classic home for a big hostname banner.

Want something other than letters? Convert a photo with the image to ASCII converter, draw with braille dot art, or copy a ready-made piece from the ASCII art gallery. For short styled text in social bios, the fancy text generator is the better fit.

Questions people ask

How do I turn text into ASCII art?

Type your text in the box, pick a font and the banner appears instantly. Press Copy to put it on your clipboard, or Download .txt to save it. Paste it anywhere that shows a monospace (fixed-width) font, such as a code editor, terminal, GitHub README or a Discord code block.

Why does my ASCII banner look broken after I paste it?

ASCII art only lines up when every character is the same width. Proportional fonts (the default in most chat apps, Word and email) squash the spaces. Wrap it in a code block – three backticks before and after in Discord, Slack, GitHub and Reddit – or choose a monospace font like Consolas or Courier.

What is FIGlet?

FIGlet is a program written by Glenn Chappell and Ian Chai in 1991 that prints large letters made of ordinary characters. Its .flf font format became the standard for text banners, and the fonts here are classic FIGlet fonts rendered with the open-source figlet.js library.

Can I put the banner in a code comment?

Yes. Choose a comment style (// , #, /* */, -- or HTML) and every line is prefixed for you, so the banner can sit at the top of a source file without breaking the code.

Is the ASCII art generator free to use for commercial projects?

The generator is free and the output is yours to use. FIGlet fonts are distributed freely by their authors; a few ask for credit in the font file, so if you ship a banner in a commercial product it is polite to check the font header.

Does the banner work with emoji or accented letters?

Most FIGlet fonts cover the 95 printable ASCII characters, and some (like Standard) also include accented Latin letters. Characters a font does not contain are skipped, so stick to plain letters, digits and punctuation for the most reliable result.