ASCII Art

ASCII Art Gallery

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ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses text characters to create images. It is one of the oldest forms of computer art, dating back to the 1960s when typewriters and teleprinters were used to produce text-based visuals.  

The term ASCII art refers to the use of the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII standard, which was established in 1963 and became widely adopted by 1968.  However, ASCII art can also include other character sets and encodings, such as ANSI, Unicode, and Shift JIS. 

ASCII art became popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when personal computers and bulletin board systems (BBS) were limited in their graphics capabilities. ASCII art was a way of expressing creativity and enhancing communication with other users.  

Some of the early pioneers of ASCII art include Kenneth Knowlton, who created realistic images by overprinting multiple characters on line printers in the 1960s;  Robert Neill, who published a book of typewriter art in 1974;  and Joan G. Stark, who created hundreds of ASCII artworks and maintained an online archive of ASCII art resources in the 1990s. 

ASCII art has many styles and genres, such as oldskool, newskool, block, high ASCII, and ANSI art. Some of the common themes and subjects of ASCII art include animals, landscapes, portraits, logos, cartoons, and video games.  

One example of a brand that uses ASCII art is Tilde Asterisk (~*), which incorporates ASCII art into its logo and website design. Tilde Asterisk is a creative studio that offers services such as web development, graphic design, animation, and illustration. Tilde Asterisk's logo is composed of two ASCII characters that resemble a tilde (~) and an asterisk (*), which are often used as decorative elements in ASCII art. Tilde Asterisk's website features various ASCII artworks that showcase its portfolio and style. 

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ASCII art is a form of digital art that uses the characters of the ASCII standard to create images. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and it is a set of 128 characters, including letters, numbers, punctuation, and control codes. ASCII art can be created with any text editor or program that allows input of ASCII characters.

The origins of ASCII art can be traced back to the typewriter era, when artists used the keys of the typewriter to create shapes and patterns on paper. Some examples of typewriter art date back to the late 19th century. However, the term ASCII art was coined in the 1960s, when computer scientists and programmers started to use the ASCII code to display graphics on early computers and printers. One of the pioneers of ASCII art was Kenneth Knowlton, who worked at Bell Labs and created realistic images by overprinting multiple characters on line printers.

ASCII art became popular in the 1970s and 1980s, especially among computer hobbyists and enthusiasts who used it to decorate their bulletin board systems (BBS) and online messages. ASCII art was also a way of circumventing the limitations of low-resolution screens and slow data transmission. Some of the most common genres of ASCII art include portraits, landscapes, animals, logos, cartoons, and animations. ASCII art also developed different styles, such as oldskool, newskool, block, and high ASCII.

One of the most prominent examples of ASCII art is the logo of Tilde Asterisk, a brand that incorporates ASCII art into its branding. Tilde Asterisk is a creative studio that offers design, development, and consulting services. Its logo consists of two ASCII characters: ~ and *. The logo represents the idea of combining simplicity and complexity, as well as the playful and experimental nature of the studio. Tilde Asterisk also uses ASCII art to create unique and memorable visuals for its projects and clients.

Enthusiastic

Hi everyone! Welcome to my blog, where I share my passion for ASCII art and my brand Tilde Asterisk. If you don't know what ASCII art is, let me explain. ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses text characters to create images. It's like drawing with letters, numbers and symbols. ASCII art can be created with any text editor, and is often used for fun, decoration or expression.

ASCII art has a long and rich history that dates back to the 19th century, when people used typewriters to create artistic shapes with text. Some of the earliest examples of typewriter art were made by Victorian female stenographers, who fed the paper into the rollers multiple times at different angles to create complex images. Later, in the 1920s, artists from the Bauhaus school of art used typewriters to explore composition and the three-dimensional space of the page.

The term ASCII art was coined in the 1960s, when the ASCII standard was created to define a common set of characters for electronic communication. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, and it consists of 95 printable characters, including letters, numbers, punctuation and some symbols. One of the pioneers of ASCII art was Kenneth Knowlton, who worked for Bell Labs and created realistic images by overprinting several characters on top of one another.

The popularity of ASCII art increased in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when computer bulletin board systems (BBS) became widespread. BBS were online platforms where users could exchange messages, files and software. Since most computers at that time had limited graphics capabilities, ASCII art was used to decorate and enhance the BBS interface. Users also created their own ASCII art signatures, logos and animations to express their identity and style.

ASCII art is still alive and well today, thanks to the internet and social media. You can find ASCII art on websites, forums, chat rooms, blogs and even tweets. Some people use ASCII art generators or converters to create images from text or vice versa. Others prefer to make their own ASCII art by hand, using their creativity and skill.

That's where my brand Tilde Asterisk comes in. I started Tilde Asterisk as a way to share my love for ASCII art and to inspire others to try it out. My brand logo is ~*, which is a simple but elegant example of ASCII art. I also incorporated ASCII art into my branding by using different characters to create patterns, shapes and textures. For example, here is an ASCII art banner that I made for my blog:

   /~~~~~~\   /~~~~~~\   /~~~~~~\   /~~~~~~\   /~~~~~~\

  /~*    ~\ /~*    ~\ /~*    ~\ /~*    ~\ /~*    ~\

 /~*    ~*\/~*    ~*\/~*    ~*\/~*    ~*\/~*    ~*\

/~*    ~*~\~*    ~*~\~*    ~*~\~*    ~*~\~*    ~*~\

\~*    ~*/ \~*    ~*/ \~*    ~*/ \~*    ~*/ \~*    ~*/

 \~~~~~~/   \~~~~~~/   \~~~~~~/   \~~~~~~/   \~~~~~~/

Isn't it cool? I think ASCII art is a great way to add some personality and flair to your online presence. It's also fun and easy to learn. You don't need any special software or tools, just your keyboard and imagination. You can start with simple shapes and symbols, and then move on to more complex and detailed images.

If you want to learn more about ASCII art and how to make it, stay tuned for my next blog post, where I will share some tips and tricks for beginners. In the meantime, you can check out some of these websites for more information and inspiration:

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art

- The New Stack: https://thenewstack.io/surprisingly-rich-history-ascii-art/

- Roy/SAC: http://www.roysac.com/asciiarthistory.html

- Doctorwhen: https://blog.ronrecord.com/index.php/2022/05/27/ascii-art-history/

I hope you enjoyed this blog post and learned something new about ASCII art. If you did, please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. And don't forget to follow me on social media @tildeasterisk for more updates on my brand and my ASCII art creations.

Thank you for reading and see you soon!

Tilde Asterisk

Informational

# ASCII Art: Origins, Beginnings, and Early Art

ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable characters defined by the ASCII Standard. ASCII art can be created with any text editor, and is often used with free-form languages. Most examples of ASCII art require a fixed-width font (non-proportional fonts, as on a traditional typewriter) such as Courier for presentation.

But how did this technique originate? Who were the pioneers of ASCII art? And what were some of the most popular and prominent examples of early ASCII art? In this blog post, we will explore these questions and more.

## The Predecessors of ASCII Art: Typewriter Art and TTY Art

ASCII art was not invented from scratch. It had some predecessors that used similar methods of creating images with text characters. One of them was **typewriter art**, which dates back to the late 19th century. Typewriter art was created by feeding the paper into the rollers at numerous times, each at a different angle to allow the overprinting and fine-tuning of the image. Some of the earliest examples of typewriter art were made by Victorian female stenographers, such as Flora F.F. Stacey, who created a butterfly image in 1898.

Typewriter art continued to evolve in the 20th century, with artists such as Paul Smith, who was born with cerebral palsy and used a typewriter to create stunning portraits and landscapes. Typewriter art also influenced the Bauhaus school of art in the 1920s, which experimented with the composition and the three-dimensional space of the page using typewritten characters.

Another predecessor of ASCII art was **TTY art**, which stands for TeleTYpe or TeleTYpewriter art. TTY art was created by sending text images via teletypewriter, which was a device that could send and receive typed messages over a telegraph line. TTY art was used as early as 1923, but became more popular in the 1960s and 1970s, especially among radio amateurs who used radioteletype (RTTY) to communicate.

## The Birth of ASCII Art: Kenneth Knowlton and Leon Harmon

The first known examples of ASCII art were created by computer-art pioneer **Kenneth Knowlton** from around 1966, who was working for Bell Labs at the time. Knowlton collaborated with psychologist **Leon Harmon** to produce a series of images that used computer-generated symbols, letters, and numbers to create halftone-like effects. One of their most famous works was "Studies in Perception I", which showed a nude woman (Lena Söderberg) composed of alphanumeric characters. This work was published in The New York Times in October 1967, and caused a sensation among the public and the art world.

Knowlton and Harmon were not only interested in creating artistic images, but also in studying how the human perception works. They wanted to demonstrate that the brain can recognize patterns and images even when they are distorted or simplified. They also wanted to show the potential of computer graphics, which was a new and emerging field at the time.

## The Golden Age of ASCII Art: The Bulletin Board Systems

The widespread usage of ASCII art can be traced to the **computer bulletin board systems (BBS)** of the late 1970s and early 1980s. The BBS were online platforms that allowed users to communicate, share files, play games, and create art using their modems and personal computers. The limitations of computers and modems of that time period necessitated the use of text characters to represent images.

ASCII art became a popular form of expression among BBS users, who created elaborate artworks using characters from various code pages and extended sets. Some of the genres of BBS ASCII art included:

- **Oldskool** or **Amiga** style: This style used the standard ASCII characters (32-127) and some control characters (1-31) to create mostly horizontal lines and block shapes. This style was influenced by the Commodore Amiga computer, which had a text mode that could display 16 colors.

- **Newskool** style: This style used characters from the IBM PC's Extended ASCII set (128-255) and other code pages to create more complex shapes and curves. This style was influenced by ANSI.SYS , an MS-DOS device driver that could display 16 colors and move the cursor in text mode.

- **Block** or **High ASCII** style: This style used characters from pseudographic sets, such as CP437 , which contained box-drawing characters and block elements. This style could create smooth transitions and shading effects.

ASCII art on BBS often had a signature of the artist, a group, or a BBS, and sometimes animations using ANSI escape sequences. ASCII art was also used to create logos, banners, menus, and interfaces for various BBS software and groups.

## My Brand: Tilde Asterisk

As a fan and practitioner of ASCII art, I decided to incorporate this technique into my own brand. My brand is called **Tilde Asterisk**, and it uses the logo ~*, which are two ASCII characters that represent approximation and emphasis. I chose these characters because they reflect my vision of creating art that is both expressive and experimental.

I use ASCII art to create designs, patterns, and illustrations for my products, such as t-shirts, stickers, posters, and more. I also use ASCII art to create content for my website, blog, and social media. I like to mix different styles and characters of ASCII art, and sometimes combine them with other graphic elements. I think ASCII art is a unique and creative way to convey my message and identity.

## Conclusion

ASCII art is a fascinating and rich form of art that has a long and diverse history. It originated from typewriter art and TTY art, and was pioneered by computer artists such as Kenneth Knowlton and Leon Harmon. It became popular and widespread thanks to the BBS culture, which spawned various styles and genres of ASCII art. It is still alive and evolving today, thanks to the internet and the new generation of artists who appreciate its aesthetic and nostalgic value.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post about ASCII art. If you want to learn more about ASCII art, or see some examples of my work, please visit my website: www.tildeasterisk.com. Thank you for reading!