Lately, I am seeing more non-image based sites. Then I remember... how could I forget? The reason why my site started with mostly ASCII.

When I websurf, I noticed a common theme- many websites are awesome because of the visuals. My favourite sites are the ones the webmaster illustrated all by themselves. Something about seeing hand-drawn artwork make the website so much more endearing. But... what will be the theme of my site? The first thing I thought about was putting my caricature and maybe something hand related. The problem? I hate drawing hands. My lack of confidence in illustration turned me to ASCII.

I would say text art is the key feature of my site. It is the navigations and in some pages, it is only text art. I make all of the text art you see in this site and they are all made... in a <textarea> box. Yeah, nothing fancy. It gives the same vibes as the early ASCII web before the specialised applications. You know, just typing and press the space bar a lot. I make basic shapes and I copy and paste the result onto note pad to save my results. Every single one of the text art you see on my site, made using this method.

Why? I am not doing this as an ode to the earlier ASCII artists. It is because I am tech inept. The font I use influence a lot of my design choices. For example, Shella would look different if I use another font, and Shella mostly look good with the font I used (jsg5).

If you want to start your copy and paste space bar journey, just remember to use monospace fonts. If you use the specialised applications, they use grids. So every font needs to be grid-like equal with height spacing. The font you choose may also have an effect on the vibes.

           ,.            |           ,.             
          /' }*          |          /' }*          
         (,'   )☼        |         (,'   )☼        
         {☼ '    }       |         {☼ '    }       
        (   *  ,'..◢◗    |        (   *  ,'..◢◗    
        ☼`._,'╮~◥◗       |        ☼`._,'╮~◥◗       
        font: jsg5       |        font:monospace      

It is really interesting how there’s different types of text arts. ASCII stands for “American Standard Code for Information Interchange”, so it’s based on the Latin alphabet. You may also know of Kaomoji, those cute caricatures based on the Japanese writing system. There’s also Braille text art which uses the braille alphabet and they are the most copy and pasted. I assume it’s because they mostly maintain their size and it is easy to generate from an image. Text mode is becoming popular which is similar to pixel art and features colour! I think text mode is mainly used for games. How wonderful is that! Text arts can differ based language and intended use. You can say they reflects the culture, language and time of creators. ASCII art is back in designs lately and I am thrilled to see how it will continue to change and involve in the future!