Text Art Generator

Type a word, a name or a title and this text art generator turns it into big ASCII letters. Pick one of 58 FIGlet fonts, add a code comment prefix, then copy the text or save it as an image.

What you can make with a text art generator

Large letters made of characters have been part of computing since line printers and bulletin board systems. Today they are used wherever plain text is the only option and you still want a heading to stand out: the banner a command-line tool prints when it starts, the title at the top of a source file, a server's login message, a section header in a long configuration file, a Discord welcome message or a GitHub README.

This text art generator, also known as a text to ASCII converter, builds those letters for you. Each FIGlet font is a set of hand-made character drawings for every letter, digit and punctuation mark, plus rules for how neighbouring letters may overlap. You type the text; the generator assembles the drawings and joins them into a block you can paste anywhere.

How to use the text to ASCII converter

Type your text in the box. Short words look best: names, titles and one-line messages. Press Enter to start a new line of big letters.
Choose a font. Standard is the classic look; Big, Slant, Doom, ANSI Shadow and Colossal are popular for banners. Press Random font to explore.
Adjust spacing. Font default uses the designer's spacing, Tight pushes letters together, Wide keeps every letter separate.
Set wrapping and comment style if the text will go into code or a terminal.
Copy or download the result as text, .txt or .png.

Popular ASCII text styles

Font	Look	Good for
Standard	Clean, medium size, made of `_ \| / \`	Code headers, README titles
Small / Mini	Compact, 3–5 lines tall	Narrow terminals, comments
Big / Doom	Tall and bold	Game and server banners
Slant / Speed	Italic, sporty	CLI tool names, logos
ANSI Shadow / ANSI Regular	Solid block letters (`█`)	Terminal splash screens
Graffiti / Bloody / Ghost	Decorative	Discord, social posts
Banner / Banner3	Made of `#` signs	Printouts, log files

To compare every style at once with your own word, open the ASCII font generator, which renders all 58 fonts side by side.

ASCII text in code and terminals

Comment prefixes

Pasting big letters into source code usually breaks the build, because the characters are not valid code. The comment style option prefixes every line for you: # for Python, Ruby, Bash, YAML and TOML; // for JavaScript, TypeScript, C, C++, C#, Java, Go, Rust and Swift; and a /* … */ block for CSS and C-style block comments. The Markdown option wraps the text in a fenced code block for README files and chat apps.

Width limits

The size readout shows how many characters wide and how many lines tall the result is. Many style guides limit lines to 80 or 100 characters, and a terminal window that is narrower than the art wraps it into a mess. Use Wrap at 80 columns for long titles, or a compact font such as Small.

Printing banners from scripts

Save the result as .txt and print it from your program with a single call such as cat banner.txt in a shell script. Keep the file as UTF-8 if you use a font with block characters like ANSI Shadow.

Text art for chats and social media

Discord, Slack, Reddit and most forums show code blocks in a monospaced font, so wrap the text art in a code block (the Markdown option does this) and it keeps its shape. Discord messages are limited to 2,000 characters, which fits a short word in most fonts. Instagram, X and Facebook do not support code blocks; use the PNG download there.

Text art generator vs. picture to ASCII

This page draws letters. If you want to turn a photo, a logo or a drawing into characters, use the ASCII art generator or image to ASCII instead. To frame a short message in a box or a speech bubble, use the ASCII message generator.

About FIGlet

FIGlet was written in 1991 by Glenn Chappell and Ian Chai and named after "Frank, Ian and Glenn's letters". Its font format became a standard, and hundreds of fonts were contributed over the following decades. This site uses figlet.js by Patrick Gillespie, a faithful JavaScript implementation released under the MIT license, together with fonts distributed with it. The fonts are free to use; their headers credit the original designers.

Text art generator FAQ

What is a text art generator?

A text art generator turns ordinary text into large letters built from many small characters, such as slashes, underscores and pipes. The result is still plain text, so it can be pasted into code, a terminal, a README or a chat while keeping its shape in a monospaced font.

Where do the fonts come from?

The 58 styles are FIGlet fonts, a free font format for ASCII letters that has been shared since the early 1990s. They are rendered with figlet.js, an open-source (MIT licensed) implementation of the FIGlet standard. Each font file credits its original author.

Why does my text art look broken after pasting?

The destination is using a proportional font where letters have different widths. Paste into a code block, a plain text editor or a terminal, or use the Markdown code block comment style. The PNG download always looks right.

Can I use non-English letters or emoji?

FIGlet fonts cover the basic Latin alphabet, digits and punctuation, and some (Standard, Big, Slant, Small) also include accented Latin letters. Characters a font does not contain are skipped, and emoji are not supported.

How do I put ASCII text in a code comment?

Choose a comment style: # for Python, Ruby, shell and YAML, // for JavaScript, C, Java and Go, or /* block */ for CSS and C-style block comments. Every line gets the right prefix, so you can paste it straight into your file.

How wide can the ASCII text be?

Most terminals and code style guides use 80 columns. The size readout under the buttons warns you when the result is wider. Pick Wrap at 80 columns to break long text into several lines of big letters automatically.