ASCII Art Generator: Text to Big ASCII Banners in FIGlet Fonts
Type a word or a line, pick a font and a width, and copy the banner. Eight real FIGlet fonts give plain ASCII that works anywhere text does; six block styles give something bolder for Discord.
Text to ASCII art: how the generator works
This is a text to ASCII art generator, not an image converter: it takes letters and draws each one big, out of ordinary characters, on several rows. The drawing comes from a font file. FIGlet, written in 1991 and still installed on most Linux and macOS systems, defined a format where every character of a font is stored as a small block of text, six rows tall for the Standard font, eight for Big, and a program stitches the blocks together side by side, kerning and overlapping them so the letters touch the way the font’s designer intended. This page runs that same algorithm in your browser with the same font files, so what you get here is what `figlet -f slant` would print in a terminal.
Eight FIGlet fonts are bundled: Standard, the one everyone recognises; Big, its larger cousin; Small and Mini for tight spaces; Slant for a lean; Shadow and Doom for weight; and Banner, which draws with the # character only and prints on anything. Their output is pure 7-bit ASCII: letters, slashes, underscores, pipes and brackets, nothing outside the original 128 characters. That is the point of ASCII art: it survives a plain-text email, a code comment, a README, a shell script’s echo, a MOTD or a 1980s terminal, because there is no character in it that any font could lack.
Big text generator for Discord, GitHub and the terminal
ASCII art only lines up in a monospaced font, where every character is the same width. Discord, GitHub, Slack, Reddit and most forums render text inside a code block in monospace, so paste the banner between three backticks; the Copy for Markdown button adds them for you. Outside a code block the letters drift and the picture falls apart, which is the first thing to check when a banner looks wrong. A terminal is monospaced by nature, and a README on GitHub shows a fenced block exactly as typed.
The width control wraps the banner between words at 40, 60, 80 or 120 columns, or not at all. Eighty is the classic terminal width and a safe default for READMEs; sixty fits a Discord message on a phone; forty is for a very narrow column. The counter under the output shows the banner’s width and height so you can see whether it will fit before you paste. Input is capped at 200 characters, which is plenty for a banner and keeps the page fast.
Block styles: bigger, bolder, not ASCII
Below the FIGlet fonts are six block styles that draw with Unicode block elements and box-drawing characters instead: solid blocks, a slanted variant, circled letters, double-line Gothic, angled Cyber and a Shadow made of light shade. They are three rows tall and much denser than any ASCII font, which makes them good for a Discord announcement or a Steam profile. They are not ASCII, and the output says so: they need a font that has those glyphs, which every modern browser, phone and chat app does but an old terminal or a plain-text mailer may not. If you need it to work everywhere, use a FIGlet font.
All 14 fonts: FIGlet fonts and block styles
The same word in every font the generator ships, drawn with the same code the tool uses. The eight FIGlet fonts are plain ASCII; the six block styles need a font with Unicode block characters. Press Use to pick one.
Standard
FIGlet · plain ASCII · 5 rows_ _ _ _ | | | | ___| | | ___ | |_| |/ _ \ | |/ _ \ | _ | __/ | | (_) | |_| |_|\___|_|_|\___/
The default figlet font since 1993. What people picture when they say ASCII text.
Big
FIGlet · plain ASCII · 6 rows_ _ _ _ | | | | | | | | |__| | ___| | | ___ | __ |/ _ \ | |/ _ \ | | | | __/ | | (_) | |_| |_|\___|_|_|\___/
Standard scaled up: eight rows tall, wide letters. Headers and hero banners.
Small
FIGlet · plain ASCII · 4 rows_ _ _ _ | || |___| | |___ | __ / -_) | / _ \ |_||_\___|_|_\___/
Standard at five rows. Fits an 80-column terminal with room to spare.
Slant
FIGlet · plain ASCII · 5 rows__ __ ____ / / / /__ / / /___ / /_/ / _ \/ / / __ \ / __ / __/ / / /_/ / /_/ /_/\___/_/_/\____/
Italic lean built from slashes. Startup scripts and MOTDs.
Shadow
FIGlet · plain ASCII · 4 rows| | | | | | _ \ | | _ \ ___ | __/ | | ( | _| _| \___| _| _| \___/
Thin letters with a drop shadow on the right.
Doom
FIGlet · plain ASCII · 6 rows_ _ _ _ | | | | | | | | |_| | ___| | | ___ | _ |/ _ \ | |/ _ \ | | | | __/ | | (_) | \_| |_/\___|_|_|\___/
Heavy letters in the style of the 1993 game logo.
Banner
FIGlet · plain ASCII · 7 rows# # # # ###### # # #### # # # # # # # ####### ##### # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # ###### ###### ###### ####
Letters made of # only, seven rows tall. Prints on anything.
Mini
FIGlet · plain ASCII · 2 rows|_| _ | | _ | | (/_ | | (_)
Three rows, mostly underscores and pipes. The smallest readable one.
Block
Unicode blocks · 3 rows█ █ █▀▀ █ █ █▀█ █▀█ █▀▀ █▄▄ █▄▄ █▄█ ▀ ▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀
Solid Unicode blocks, three rows. The site’s original banner style.
Slanted
Unicode blocks · 3 rows█ █ █▀▀▀ █ █ ▄▀▀▄ █▀▀█ █▀▀ █▄▄▄ █▄▄▄ █ █ ▀ ▀ ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀
Blocks with a lean.
Bubble
Unicode blocks · 1 rows(H) (E) (L) (L) (O)
One row of circled letters, Ⓐ Ⓑ Ⓒ.
Gothic
Unicode blocks · 3 rows╦ ╦ ╔═╗ ╦ ╦ ╔═╗ ╠═╣ ╠═╣ ║ ║ ║ ║ ╩ ╩ ╚═╝ ╩═╝ ╩═╝ ╚═╝
Double-line box drawing, ╔═╗.
Cyber
Unicode blocks · 3 rows█ █ █▀▀ █ █ ◢■◣ █▀█ █▀▀ █▄▄ █▄▄ █ █ ▀ ▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀
Blocks with angled corners, ◢◣.
Shaded
Unicode blocks · 3 rows█ █░ █▀▀░ █ ░ █ ░ █▀█░ █▀█░ █▀▀░ █▄▄░ █▄▄░ █▄█░ ▀ ▀░ ▀▀▀░ ▀▀▀░ ▀▀▀░ ▀▀▀░
Blocks with a light-shade shadow, ░.
ASCII art generator questions
Is this ASCII art generator copy and paste?
Yes. Press Copy and paste the banner where you want it. If the destination uses Markdown (Discord, GitHub, Slack, Reddit), press Copy for Markdown instead: it wraps the banner in a code fence so the letters stay lined up. Download saves it as a .txt file.
Why does my ASCII art look broken after pasting?
The destination is showing it in a proportional font, where letters have different widths, so the rows no longer align. Put it in a code block (three backticks on Discord and GitHub) or anywhere that uses a monospaced font. Some platforms also collapse runs of spaces outside code blocks, which shifts everything left.
What is FIGlet?
A program from 1991 that prints text as large letters made of ordinary characters, and the font format it introduced (.flf), in which each character is a small block of text. There are hundreds of FIGlet fonts; this page ships eight of the best-known and renders them with the same algorithm the program uses, so the output matches what figlet prints in a terminal.
Can I convert an image or a photo to ASCII art here?
No. This page converts text only. Image to ASCII is a different process, which samples a picture’s brightness and replaces each patch with a character of similar density; it needs an image converter, not a font.
Which font should I use for a GitHub README or a terminal banner?
Standard or Small at 80 columns for a README: they are the most readable and every developer recognises them. Slant or Big for a startup banner in a shell script. Banner, made of # only, if the text will go through something that mangles slashes and backslashes. Keep it to one or two short words; long phrases wrap onto several rows and lose impact.
Does it work for Discord and Steam?
Yes, in a code block. On Discord, use Copy for Markdown and paste; the fence makes it monospaced. Steam profiles and comments do not have code blocks, so the block styles, which are one to three rows tall and dense, hold up better there than the thinner FIGlet fonts.
Related tools
- Borders & DividersWrap text in 33 copy-and-paste borders: box frames, ribbons, bracket wraps and dividers.
- Zalgo Glitch LabCorrupt text with stacked combining marks, with the intensity and direction under your control.
- Morse Code TranslatorTranslate text to Morse and back, with authentic telegraph audio and a hold-to-key practice button.
- Font generatorAll 32 Unicode styles, modifiers and the social preview, on the homepage.