Scary abbreviations aren't they? They look like some sort of weird internet protocol! They're not! They're all about text art! And you can get in on this with a little bit of creativity.

Long ago in a time far away the internet was being born. The creators developed wonderful worlds for you to explore with gadgets that would seem ancient in the current sense. You see, back in the day, in the 1980's the internet was being adapted to home use slowly. They didn't have Internet Explorer and they certainly didn't have Firefox. All they had was text based applications that utilized phone lines.

ASCII art was born in this day in age. It required artists to toss aside their pencils and paint brushes. They had to embrace the keyboard.

ASCII is the standard that makes all keyboards work the same way. When you type Q and I type Q it looks the same way. This is where the artists come in:

Back in the day due to memory restrictions all letters in a font had to be the same width and height. That allowed for, "monotype". If you type an, "M" above a, "(" they line up perfectly! Therefore artists could type and use the curvatures of the letters to create art! This made for very interesting pieces of art that acted as:

- menus
- log in screens
- and gaming graphical user interfaces!

It was all text! One letter or symbol at a time in a grid perfectly in line with each other! But then ANSI came in...

ANSI was a revolution in text art during the late 80's into the mid 90's. It allowed color and it allowed animation! However it was still text! Programmers added new characters to the standard ASCII protocol that expanded the current set that allowed blocks and lines.

No. Not like bricks. These blocks and lines still took the same space as a standard letter. Everything still lined up!

I encourage you to check out the ANSI and ASCII galleries under:

Digital Art > Text Art

A place in history.