You don't have to be able to draw to be an artist. There are other ways and things to create with. For instance, clay, paper, thread, plants and text. Chances are you have seen art made with text. Its called ASCII art and it appears most often in email signatures. ASCII art is used to promote your website by attracting attention to the URL in your signature. But ASCII art is also a lot of fun and a challenging hobby. Of course, its not easy to get started, though you would think its pretty simple. All you need is a computer or typewriter. You supply all the creativity, ideas, skill and imagination.

To start try finding a very simple picture or just use your name. See if you can create a copy of it using the ASCII keyboard characters. If you are working on your name try using just one character and then selecting a second one to fill in more spaces. Work along that way, remove some characters when you find one that works better. That's really how I make my own ASCII art, just trying different characters to fill in spaces and taking out ones that didn't work as well. You can also look at other people's ASCII art for ideas, see how they used different characters to fill in spaces.

Don't forget to include your artist's initials. Your initials show the picture was made by you. Most people who appreciate ASCII art will keep your initials with your picture.

There are lots of places to share your ASCII art. You can have it on your personal website, make your own ASCII art gallery. People colour ASCII art and show it off in different IRC and chat channels too. There is also an ASCII art newsgroup: alt.ascii-art. The SigList is a wonderful email discussion list for ASCII art fans and artists. If you want some help making your ASCII art that's a good place to look.

Here is some basic information to help you through the usual problems people have when they start making ASCII art. Signatures, or any ASCII art you want to send through email, should be small. If you can keep it under 5 lines you're doing great. I've made some which are four lines, the acceptable standard. Also keep signatures less than 75 characters wide. Longer signatures can wrap and then they just look like a mess of text. NotePad is really the best place to make ASCII art, it doesn't open up very wide. As long as you keep your signature at a size that fits easily in NotePad you will have no trouble sending it in an email.

ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, the keys you can see on your keyboard. One thing all ASCII art has in common is a monospace font. This keeps it looking the same for all computers. If you are seeing ASCII art all warped, jumbled looking, try changing your font to FixedSys or Courier New. If you make your ASCII art in Windows NotePad you have the FixedSys font automatically.

Once upon a time a signature wasn’t much more than a show of good penmanship. Now a signature can be plain, just links, maybe a quote. Signatures in HTML are colourful and fancy but too clunky for downloading with email. I like ASCII art signatures best of all. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, your basic everyday keyboard characters. Its become a tradition for ASCII art to only use the characters you can actually see on your keyboard. If you get into the alt key the art becomes ANSI art.

ASCII art has been used for more than just signatures. MUDs, IRC chat, ezines and of course newsgroup and email postings have used ASCII art and emoticons (smileys). Some people have printed out the bigger pictures for kids to colour. One thing all ASCII art has in common is a monospace font. This keeps it looking the same for all computers. If you are seeing ASCII art all warped, jumbled looking, try changing your font to FixedSys or Courier New. When ASCII art is included in a webpage it needs the HTML tag pre and /pre to keep the characters arranged with all the spaces in place.

Signatures should be short but not too cluttered. If you can keep it under 5 lines you’re doing great. I’ve made some which are four lines, the acceptable standard. I think the netiquette police aren’t so concerned with the length of ASCII signatures now that HTML is getting more popular. Still, you don’t want to annoy people with your signature, usually. Keep signatures less than 75 characters wide. Longer signatures can wrap and then they just look like a mess of text. Don’t forget to include your URL and if you use ASCII art, the artist’s initials.

In July 1996 while still a Net newbie, I thought the pictures made with keyboard characters were amazing. Making the pictures myself seemed so out of reach. I didn’t even know what they were called. I searched for keyboard art, typewriter art, anything and everything I could think of. I didn’t find what I was looking for. Finally, I found a site answering newbie questions and they emailed back and told me: ASCII Art! The mystery was solved!

I made my first keepable picture January 1998 (with the help of Albert and Joan on the Sig-List). ASCII Art became my special outlet for the drawing I have always wished I could do. Its been a few years and a lot of ASCII later. I have some signatures I especially like, some art I enjoy sharing on my personal site and a few really great ways of promoting my projects online. People notice ASCII art. Not everyone has my appreciation of it, but it does get noticed. Some people, like my husband, say it’s outdated, a throwback to the 70’s. Little does he know, ASCII Art is still evolving and it started on typewriters, not computers.

ASCII art isn’t using a program to turn a graphic into ASCII text. Anyone can open a program, that’s not art. ASCII art is created when someone uses a minimal amount of data to represent an object. Of course, its not always easy to see, the whole eye of the beholder thing… But its really impressive what some people can do with just a few keyboard characters and a lot of imagination and creativity.

This was originally posted to the BackWash site, October 12, 2001. I wrote there several years before the site closed.