_____ _ ____ _ ____ _ _ _
|_ _| |__ ___ / ___|| |_ ___ _ __ _ _ | __ ) ___| |__ (_)_ __ __| |
| | | '_ \ / _ \ \___ \| __/ _ \| '__| | | | | _ \ / _ \ '_ \| | '_ \ / _` |
| | | | | | __/ ___) | || (_) | | | |_| | | |_) | __/ | | | | | | | (_| |
|_| |_| |_|\___| |____/ \__\___/|_| \__, | |____/ \___|_| |_|_|_| |_|\__,_|
|___/ The Story Behind ASCII Art Archive
This is the story of how a fascination with text-based games in the 1980s grew into a lifelong love for ASCII art and eventually led to the creation of asciiart.eu. The site is owned by Injosoft to guarantee that it will always stay online as a permanent home for ASCII art.It all started back in the 1980s when the ABC80 was still new and almost everything on a screen was made entirely of text. There were no fancy graphics, no high-resolution displays, just characters, symbols and imagination.
I was fascinated by how simple letters and numbers could turn into entire games, worlds and stories. That feeling never really left me. Even as computers evolved I remained captivated by the magic of turning plain text into something bigger than itself.
When Bulletin Board Systems became popular I spent countless hours dialing in with a modem, listening to the crackling connection sounds and waiting for that moment when the screen came to life. Many boards were filled with creativity, and some of them felt like works of art themselves. Entire menus, welcome screens and even whole sites were built with nothing but ASCII characters, and watching them slowly render line by line was something truly special.
In the early 90s, when email became popular, I started collecting every little ASCII signature, smiley and text-based picture that was sent around. My inbox became a treasure chest of tiny artworks and creative experiments from people all over the world.
Then I became addicted to Usenet groups. Reading posts from people who wrote and published amazing ASCII art kept me glued to the screen. I was constantly impressed by all the incredible sites that started to appear, filled with ASCII pictures and creative experiments.
But over time the interest in ASCII art faded. Many of those brilliant artists disappeared into the eternal darkness of cyberspace. To prevent this art form from being forgotten I started uploading my own archive as a small section on my site ascii-code.com.
When the traffic grew rapidly I decided around 2018 to give it a dedicated home. That was when asciiart.eu was born. Being a nerd who loves building small tools I naturally began developing the site further, adding various utilities to help keep ASCII art alive and to inspire new generations to create.
The truth is, I am not a great artist myself. I can build tools, I can collect, I can preserve, but I will always admire those who can truly draw masterpieces with nothing but characters. For me the real joy is in creating tools and experimenting with new ideas that make ASCII art accessible to everyone. It is also a way to relax. My daily work involves advanced database projects and the visualization of large amounts of data, so spending time with ASCII art is a welcome break and a completely different kind of creativity.
I have also been lucky enough to get help along the way. The development of ASCII Draw Studio, for example, would not have been possible without the contribution of a truly talented developer. And just as important, I have received countless emails from visitors with suggestions, feature requests and encouraging words. This site has grown thanks to all of you, and I am deeply grateful for the support and enthusiasm that keeps the ASCII spirit alive.
Thank you for being part of this journey and for keeping the world of ASCII art alive.
Joacim Wejdin