ASCII Banner Maker

Turn a word into a big banner made of ASCII characters, like the classic terminal splash text.

Text made of text

An ASCII banner spells a word out in large letters built from smaller characters — the oversized, blocky lettering you have seen at the top of terminal programs, README files and retro bulletin boards. It is a piece of computing culture that never quite went away, and it still makes a plain heading feel characterful in any fixed-width setting.

Type a short word or phrase and it is rendered as a big character banner.

Keep it monospace, keep it short

Like all ASCII art, a banner only holds its shape in a monospace font, where every character is the same width — paste it somewhere with a proportional font and the letters skew. Short words work best, since big ASCII letters eat a lot of horizontal space; a whole sentence quickly becomes unreadable. It is made for titles, splash screens and code comments, not paragraphs.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I use an ASCII banner?

Terminal splash screens, README files, code comments — anywhere that uses a fixed-width font.

Why does it look wrong when I paste it?

It needs a monospace font. In a proportional font the characters no longer line up.

Is my text uploaded?

No. The banner is generated in your browser.

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