ASCII art generator for logos

A short history of ASCII art

ASCII is the character set computers have shared since the 1960s: letters, digits, punctuation, 95 printable characters in all. Long before screens could show images, people drew with them. Typewriter art came first; then printouts, terminals, bulletin boards and email signatures, where a picture had to be made of text to travel at all.

The trick is that characters have different densities. An @ or a # covers much more of its cell than a period or a colon. Pick a character for each small area of an image according to how dark it is, and the text reads as a picture. That ordered list of characters, from dense to light, is called a ramp.

How this ASCII logo generator works

The tool reads your logo’s shape, gives it depth, lights it as a 3D object, then replaces every cell of the image with a character from the set you choose: dense characters for lit faces, light ones for shadow. The version shown here uses the Binary set of 0s and 1s on a blue background, and the logo follows your pointer.

• Logo: one of three demo shapes (a mark, an asterisk, type) or your own SVG or image. Invert shape picks which side of an import without transparency is the logo.
• Follow mouse on hover: the logo turns toward the pointer.
• Extrusion depth, Logo size and Tilt: how thick the 3D logo is, how big, and how it leans.
• Idle motion and Speed: a full spin, a sway, or still.
• Characters: four sets, Classic, Blocks, Binary and Code. Character size sets the grid, Density how much of it fills up.
• Background, Light ink and Shadow ink: the three colors.

What designers use it for

• Animated logo loops for social posts, event screens and website headers.
• Tech, developer and crypto brands that want a terminal feel without a stock effect.
• Title cards and transitions in motion pieces, exported as video.
• Posters and merch where the logo is made of text, sometimes text from the brand itself.

Tips

Simple, bold logos read best: thin strokes disappear once they are drawn in characters. Start with a larger character size and reduce it until the logo is clear. Blocks and Binary give a graphic, poster-like result; Classic gives the most shading. Keep Shadow ink close to the background for a soft logo, or far from it for a hard one. The presets show four directions: Terminal (green on black), Paper print, Blocks and Deep extrude.

Make your own ASCII tool

This tool was made in Blueprint from a description. If you need something else, like ASCII from a photo, a video, or text that types itself in, describe it and you get your own tool with sliders and presets. Animated tools export as video as well as PNG.