Big Text & Text Art Generator

How big text art works and where it stays aligned

Big text art is several lines of ordinary characters arranged so that together they draw large letters. It keeps its shape only where every character, including the space, has the same width.

What the banners are made of

The block style draws each letter on a grid three characters wide and three lines tall, using three characters from Unicode's Block Elements block (full block, upper half block and lower half block) with spaces for the gaps. With one column between letters, a ten-letter word is 40 columns wide. The asterisk style is pure ASCII on a five by five grid, so ten letters take 60 columns and five lines. Count the columns before you paste: a line wider than the window wraps, and a wrapped banner cannot be read.

Why it needs a monospaced context

Block Elements come from character-cell displays such as terminals, where every character occupies an identical cell and a full block fills it edge to edge. In a proportional font the space is narrower than a block, so every gap pulls the rest of its line to the left and the columns stop lining up. Line spacing matters as well. Many apps add room between lines, which shows as thin horizontal stripes through the letters even when the columns are correct. A code block or plain-text editor fixes the widths; the stripes depend on the font and line height in use.

Letter emoji and screen readers

The emoji results are single-line alternatives that need no alignment. Regional indicator letters are the building blocks of flag emoji: two in a row that spell a country code are shown as a flag, which is why the generator separates them with spaces. How a lone indicator is drawn differs between platforms.

A screen reader reads a block banner as a long run of character names or skips it, so put the same words in plain text next to it.

More questions

Why are there thin lines running through my block letters?

The app adds space between lines, so the blocks of one row do not touch the row below. The banner is intact; it will look solid in a terminal or an editor with tight line spacing.

Which characters can a banner contain?

The block style draws the letters A to Z, the digits 0 to 9, the exclamation mark and the question mark. Lowercase is drawn as capitals, and any other character leaves a blank space.

Why did two letter emoji turn into a flag?

Regional indicator letters are what flag emoji are made of. If the space between two of them is removed and they spell a country code, the pair is displayed as that country's flag.

How do I make big text art accessible?

Add the same words in plain text before or after the banner. Accessibility guidance treats text art as an image made of characters, which needs a text alternative.