Keep it in a monospace font
ASCII art only works when every character occupies the same width. Paste it into a proportional font and the columns drift, because a lowercase l is narrower than a W. In Slack, Discord, GitHub and Markdown, wrapping it in a fenced code block is enough.
Where banners are genuinely useful
- A login banner or message-of-the-day on a server.
- Section dividers in a long configuration file, so you can find them by eye.
- A project name at the top of a README.
- CLI tool splash output — the reason so many command-line programs greet you with one.
Keep them short. A banner is a signpost, and anything longer than a few words becomes wider than a terminal and wraps into noise.
More free text tools
- Word counterLive word count with reading time, sentences and paragraphs.
- Character counterCharacters with and without spaces, against X, SMS and SEO limits.
- Letter counterCount letters only, with a frequency breakdown for puzzles.
- Text cleanerStrip extra spaces, blank lines and invisible characters in one pass.
- Remove line breaksRejoin text that a PDF or email broke into short lines.
- Text compareDiff two versions and see what was added, removed and left alone.
Frequently asked questions
Is the ASCII art generator free?
Yes, with no account and no watermark.
Where can I paste ASCII art?
Anywhere that uses a monospace font: terminal banners and MOTDs, code comments, README files, commit messages, Slack and Discord code blocks, and plain-text email signatures. In a proportional font the columns will not line up and the shape falls apart.
Why does my art look crooked?
Almost always because it is being displayed in a proportional font, where every character is a different width. Wrap it in a code block — three backticks in Slack, Discord, GitHub and Markdown — or set the font to monospace.
Which characters are supported?
A to Z, digits 0 to 9, spaces, and common punctuation. Lowercase is drawn in uppercase, which is the convention for block banners. Anything the font has no glyph for is skipped rather than replaced with a gap.
Which fill character should I use?
The full block gives the most solid result and looks best in a terminal. Use # or * where Unicode might be stripped, such as older mail clients or systems limited to plain ASCII.