🔤 ASCII Art Generator

A figlet font is a data file that stores a multi-line picture for every printable character. Each glyph occupies a fixed number of rows, and the renderer stitches glyphs together horizontally row by row, so the first row of every letter forms the first line of the output, the second row forms the second, and so on. That is why ASCII art only lines up correctly in a monospaced typeface, where every character occupies the same width.

The generator loads font files on demand and preloads a handful of common ones, so switching fonts fetches a different glyph set. Changing the font changes both the height and the average width of the result, because a compact face such as Mini uses far fewer rows and columns per letter than a heavy face such as Colossal.

The width setting is a column limit. When a rendered line would exceed it, the renderer breaks the text so the block stays inside the limit. Alignment is applied afterwards, since figlet output is naturally flush left: for centre or right alignment each line is padded with spaces to shift it within the chosen width.

Suppose you type the word README, choose the Standard font, leave the width at 80 columns and keep left alignment. Standard draws capitals roughly six rows tall, so the output is a block of about six lines. Standard letters average around eight columns each, so six characters come to roughly fifty columns, comfortably inside the 80 column limit, and nothing wraps.

Now push the same font to a longer phrase, say twelve characters. At roughly eight columns per letter that is close to a hundred columns, which exceeds the 80 limit, so the renderer breaks the phrase and the banner becomes two stacked blocks of six lines each rather than one very wide strip.

If you then switch alignment to centre while keeping the 80 column width, a fifty column block gains fifteen spaces of padding at the start of each line, since the thirty leftover columns are split evenly on both sides. Finally, entering a hash in the fill character box swaps every drawing character in the glyphs for a hash, which flattens the shading of fonts that normally mix slashes, underscores and pipes into a single solid texture.

ASCII art is whitespace-sensitive. If the destination renders your text in a proportional typeface, the columns will not line up and the banner will look broken through no fault of the generator. In a readme file, wrap the block in a fenced code block. In a terminal, a chat client or a code comment the typeface is already monospaced, so it will hold its shape.

Width is the setting that most often needs adjusting. Terminals traditionally run 80 columns wide, and readme files on code hosting sites display at a similar width before they start scrolling sideways. Choosing a shorter phrase or a narrower font is usually better than letting a wide banner wrap in an awkward place.

Decorative and fancy fonts are the least portable. Some use box-drawing or extended characters that may not survive being pasted into systems with a different character encoding, and very tall fonts such as Colossal can dominate a page. The custom fill character removes internal shading, which improves legibility for heavy fonts but can make delicate fonts such as Thin or Script hard to read.