25.5.2026

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ASCII ART

as DESIGN PRACTICE

HEIKKI LOTVONEN

ADEL FAURE

{1272}

Tekstin talo

ADEL FAURE

Find my work on www.adelfaure.net

Face Study, 2023, interactive ASCII art using Jgs Font

Blue Jay, 2023, textmode artwork using Textor

Untitled, 2025, live coded audio synthesis and custom text mode using Textor

What is ASCII art ?

computers, Joan G Stark aka jgs, march 1997, ASCII
Source: oldcompcz.github.io/jgs/joan_stark/

They are "non-graphical graphics". Its palette is limited to the symbols and characters that you have available to you on your computer keyboard.

Joan G Stark, 1999, The History of ASCII (text) Art

               -=[ computers ]=-  3/97
         ___________                              
        /          /|                             
       /__________/ |            ___________      
      |.---------.| |           |.---------.|     
      ||         || |           ||         ||     
      ||         || |           ||         ||     
      ||         || |           ||         ||     
      |'---------'|/            |'---------'|     
       `)__ _____(']             `)__ ____('      
       [=== -- o ]/--.           [=== -- o ]--.   
     __'---------'__  \        __'---------'__ \  
jgs [::::::::::: :::]  )  jgs [::::::::::: :::] ) 
     `""'"""""'""""` /T\       `""'"""""'""""`/T\ 
                     \_/                      \_/

Every system got its own ASCII art

PERCEVAL, RTBF Liège, Belgique, Juin 1981, Teletext
Source: text-mode.org (goto80)

Morten Juvet, 1979, teletext.
Source: https://yle.fi/aihe/tekstitv?P=805

Tri Nebula BBS screen, Shoeshine Boy, 1988, PETSCII
Source: text-mode.org (goto80)

Dockter Delirium Tremens PH.D, 1986, PETSCII
Source: text-mode.org (goto80)

Source: text-mode.org (goto80)

Rambone, Kung Fu Master, 1987, animated ATASCII with sound

カンニング大作戦, an early 80’s game for MZ-80 by Hudson (SharpSCII).
Source: text-mode.org (goto80)

Mupid, Austrian videotex terminal. h/t: Tim Koch.
Source: text-mode.org (goto80)

-t-ap3e.txt, rELiEf / Twisted. 1996. Amiga Ascii.
Source: asciiarena.se

The Fox and the Goat, Georges Ramos, 1992, ANSI
Source: 16colo.rs

Starship BBS screen, ANSI-Mation, 1990, ANSI.
Source: 16colo.rs

Dekinaiko smile, juin 2010, Shift-JIS
Source: ascii.mozz.us

Tired, Nymue, 2002, Chinese ANSI
Source: ascii.mozz.us

A few contemporay artworks

Busy Beavers, Mozz, 2021, ASCII

Snow, LDA, 2021, ANSI

Snow leopards don't live on Christmas Island, Dan Farrimond, 2016, Teletext

Cage, Dwimmer, 2021, PETSCII

The Empress, Pépé, 2021-2023, ATASCII

妖怪がしゃどくろ, 機動戦艦艦長, 2022 - Shift-JIS

によるイース２オープニングデモ by かねごん, 2018. A five-minute demo in 34 kilobytes, running on the MZ-700. SharpSCII. Source: text-mode.org (goto80)

William Gibson (again) by Hellbeard / Impure!ASCII 1940, 2025. Amiga ASCII. Source: 16colo.rs

Text mode arts ?

Sunflower Field, Kurogao, 2022, Unicode

Grx-vessel, Synkedam, 2021, XBin

Fear the Creeper, Polyducks, 2019, custom text mode

BEWARE THE CURSED JEWEL OF SIR TEXTMODE!, Batfeula, 2024, custom text mode

Raquel Meyers’ practice centres on KYBDslöjd, which stands for ‘keyboard dexterity’. Source: teletextart.co.uk

A portrait of David Bowie by Yung Jake (Jake Patterson). 2017.

Hortau, 2024. XBin.
Source: 16colo.rs

penseminhocas, 2021. GlyphDrawingClub.

Before computers

A specimen of printing types by William Caslon, 1785.

Vignette Décor / Fonderie typographique française, 1935.

Das Magazin, November 1931

Andres Ferrer ~1870.

An ideal, not a nostalgia

The lure of ASCII art might not be in the nostalgia of how it looks, but what it represents: the ideals of "cyberspace". It stands for a wistful longing for those pre-internet days when corporations hadn't yet taken control of our digital day-to-day and the community was still in control of organising itself.

Heikki Lotvonen, 2022, ASCII art: From a Commodity Into an Obscurity

Text mode tools

There is no standard for text mode animation, each artist got its own process, tool or software.

AAEditor

Alivepaintery

Alienmelon ASCII

Asc Paint

asciiflow

ASCII lion

ASCII art paint

ASCII PAINT (SKELETON EDITION)

Charaster

Durdraw

Edit.tf

Fsymbols

IcyDraw

Jave5

Krissz’s PETSCII editor

lvllvl

MarQ’s PETSCII editor (Vent's fork)

Moebius

MoebiusXBIN

monodraw

Monosketch

MUTTLEE

PabloDraw

Playscii

Petmate

QTeletextMaker

RexPaint

Textor

text.0w.nz

txtgrd

Telepaint

Textual paint

Unicode Drawing Club

wxTED Teletext Editor

ZX Teletext Page Editor

Durdraw demo, Indyjoenz, 2023

Text mode animation

Sheep, Jarfish, 2021 - Teletext

Untitled, Jellica, 2017 - PETSCII video conversion using Lvllvl

Button Presser, Polyducks, 2021 - PETSCII using Lvllvl

KADK students, 2021 - XBin. MoebiusXBIN

Quack quack, Harmonie Aupetit, 2023 - text editor and raster graphics editor (Photoshop)

Dandelion, Joninscii, 2021 - text editor and raster graphics editor (Figma)

I see the rain, Blippypixel, 2021 - Teletext using Telepaint

The Impure Express, Impure!ASCII, 2021. Amiga ASCII art – PabloDraw & animated with python.

Text mode video games

Stone Story, Standardcombo, 2020

Rainy day remastered, TouloutouMou, 2022

Whispers in the Moss, Uncultured Games, 2023

Ascii Patrol, Gumix, 2016

Abandoned Cyber-punk game project, Jackson Lango, 2017

Asciicker, Gumix, 2020

WIP Game by CyberApex, 2026

Effulgence RPG, Andrei Fomin, 2026.

CandyBox
Cogmind
Effulgence RPG
LumASCII
Stone Story RPG
Sanctuary RPG: Black Edition
Warsim

My work

                               +--------------+                                 
                               | Free license |                                 
                               +--------------+                                 
                                      |                                         
            +-------------------------+--------------------------+              
            |                         |                          |              
        +-------+             +----------------+       +-------------------+    
        | Fonts |             | Textmode tools |       | Live-coding tools |    
        +-------+             +----------------+       +-------------------+    
            |                         |                          |              
            +-------+-----------------+---------------------+----+              
                    |                 |                     |                   
              +----------+        +-------+             +-------+               
              | Artworks |        | Games |             | Music |               
              +----------+        +-------+             +-------+               
                                                                                
                                                                                
             I create my own tools or I use free license software               
       I'm using linux, making most of my work using a text editor (Vim)        
                 For making fonts I use Inkscape and Fontforge

Jgs Font

Jgs Font, work in progress since 2019

Mortimer Twang, 1995, Amiga ASCII
Source: text-mode.org (goto80)

Result from script
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
on Amiga

Le bureau de poste de Bar-sur-Seine, 2024

Halles de Bar-sur-Seine, 2024

Landreville 30 aout 1902, 2024

Pixboard

Amityville, 2022

Island, 2022

Players in Space, 2022

Pixboard, 2022, a keyboard based pixel art editor

Textor

Earthly Delight, 2023

Pond, 2023

Waiting for the bus, 2023

Textor, WIP since 2023, a textmode engine and editor

Lyon's Algorave posters

2022

2023

2024

2025

Game prototypes

Joan Jump, 2019 - 2022

The Cave of the Giant Ghost Worm, 2022

RPG, 2023

Platformer, 2023

A Very Bold Character, 2024

Interlaced, 2024-2025

???, 2024

ASCII Frogger, 2024

The Wind through the Wheels

Peloton behaviour, 2022

Colors changes with time and pyramid, 2023

Rainy shore, 2023

Rendering ASCII art from topographic data, 2024

Visual novel game screen, 2025

Turn-based road confrontation game screen, 2025

Travel game screen, 2025

Cyclist animation, 2025

HEIKKI LOTVONEN

Designer-in-Residency

@ Centre For Text Margins

September 2025 — August 2026

ASCII art since 2015

ASCII art related editors since 2018

cons[-2]tra[1]i[1]n[2]t[2]s

that inspire rather than limit

modular blocks + uniform grid + "experimental" workflow

make a book

where I design

everything myself

GOAL:

STROKE

LETTER

PARAGRAPH

LAYOUT

FONT

PAGES

THREADING

GRAPHICS

PDF

TEXT ART

(USER INTERFACES)

s[-1]t[-1]r[-1]o[-1]ke

ie. how to connect two points

STRAIGHT LINES

https://hlnet.neocities.org/hershey/ruusut/

Ruusut Flow 2025

Ruusut Blackbox (Jäähalli) 2026

https://hlnet.neocities.org/hershey/

CUBIC BÉZIER

G-CONIC

SEMI-JUSTIFIED TEXT

https://hlnet.neocities.org/ascii-zine/

grid-system {
  width:148mm;
  height:210mm;
}
@media print {
  @page {
    size: A5 portrait;
  }
}

In Firefox: File → Print → Save to PDF.

https://hlnet.neocities.org/il-verse/

Milja Laurila

done by me, @sebastian.dahlstrom.drawings, @kiitoskone, @anna.gatherer, @porcelain_hive and Pia Korhonen. Printed with risograph at @if_by_magic_helsinki.