ASCII art text generator

Every letter is drawn on a 5-row grid using the character you choose. For example, HI with the # fill looks like this:

#   # ###
#   #  # 
#####  # 
#   #  # 
#   # ###

The generator supports A–Z, the digits 0–9 and common punctuation such as . , ! ? - : ' " + = / ( ) # @ & *. Lowercase letters are drawn as capitals. Characters it does not know are replaced with a question mark. Some accented letters are drawn with a small accent mark above the base letter.

Each line of input becomes a separate banner, so you can stack words.

• Code comments: a big section header at the top of a long file or config makes it easy to find when scrolling.
• README files and docs: a project name banner at the top of a README.
• Terminal and CLI tools: a startup banner for your script, server or command-line app.
• Server login messages: the message of the day (/etc/motd) on a Linux server, so you can see at a glance which machine you are on.
• Chat and forums: messages in Slack, Discord or email, as long as they are shown in a monospaced font.

To keep the alignment, always paste ASCII art where a monospaced font is used: a code block, a terminal or a plain-text file. In proportional fonts, the letters fall apart.

Fill	Look	Best for
#	Classic, light	Code comments, logs
█	Solid blocks	Terminal banners, high contrast
*	Airy	Retro style, email
@ or $	Dense	Larger banners viewed from a distance
0	Digital	Playful headers

The full block █ is a Unicode character. It looks best in modern terminals and editors; very old systems that only support plain ASCII may show it as a question mark, so use # there.

Letter spacing adds 0 to 5 blank columns between letters. One column is the default; use 0 for a compact look or 2–3 when using █, so letters do not merge.

Pictures made from typed characters are older than computers: typists in the early 20th century made decorative art on typewriters. With computers and line printers in the 1960s and 70s, and later on bulletin board systems (BBS) and in early internet culture, text art became a way to add logos and banners to systems that could only display characters.

ASCII itself is the 1963 American Standard Code for Information Interchange, a set of 128 characters including the English alphabet, digits and punctuation. Strictly speaking, "ASCII art" uses only those characters. Art that uses block characters like █ or box-drawing lines comes from extended character sets and Unicode, but the name ASCII art is commonly used for both.

Banner-style lettering like this tool produces is still popular for startup screens of command-line tools and for server login messages.

• Keep it short. Each letter is about 5 characters wide, so around 15 letters fit on an 80-column terminal line. Long phrases are better split over several lines.
• Wrap it in a code block in Markdown: three backticks before and after, so GitHub and other renderers keep the spacing.
• Comment it out in source code with #, // or /* … */ as your language needs.
• The output is limited to 200 characters of input, which is plenty for banners.

Everything is generated in your browser; nothing you type is sent to a server.