Big Text Generator

Making the banner takes a moment. Pasting it somewhere that keeps the spacing is the part that needs care.

1. Type a short word or phrase into the Input box. The placeholder asks for short text for a reason: each letter is six columns wide.
2. Choose the Character that draws the letters: # hash, █ block, * star or @ at.
3. The banner appears in the output box in a fixed-width font so that every column lines up.
4. Press Copy or Download .txt, then paste into a place that also uses a fixed-width font, such as a code block or a terminal.

Line breaks in your input become spaces, so the result is always one banner, five rows tall.

Here is what to expect from the word HI. The H takes six columns including its trailing gap and the I takes the same, so the finished banner is eleven columns wide once the trailing space is trimmed. The first row reads hash, three spaces, hash, a space and five hashes, which is the top of the H followed by the top bar of the I. If you choose the block character instead, the shape is identical and only the drawing character changes. Choose the hash, star or at sign when the destination might lack the block symbol, or when you want a lighter look.

The tool contains one font, a five-by-five grid for each character. Every cell is either filled or empty. To write a word it takes row one of every letter and joins them side by side, then row two, and so on to row five. After each letter it adds one empty column, so a letter occupies six columns, and a space is four. The letter H and the letter I are drawn like this, with dots standing for blanks that the tool turns into spaces.

The font covers A to Z (lowercase is treated as capitals), the digits 0 to 9, and the marks ! ? . , - and the colon and apostrophe. Anything else, such as @, #, &, accented letters or emoji, is skipped without a warning. Only the first 40 characters are used. As a rule of thumb, n letters need about 6n - 1 columns, so 13 letters fit a standard 80-column terminal and 40 letters reach roughly 240 columns. The word README is 35 columns wide and WELCOME is 41, which both sit comfortably in a code block, while a 20-letter phrase would already need 119 columns and force sideways scrolling.

Banner letters only hold their shape in a fixed-width font. In a proportional font the characters have different widths and the columns drift apart, and a line that wraps destroys the picture.

• GitHub README files. Paste the banner between two lines of three backticks to make a fenced code block, which keeps the spacing. You can check the result in the Markdown editor before committing.
• Terminals and scripts. A banner makes a stage easy to spot in a log or a login message.
• Code comments. The tool adds no comment markers, so add them to each row after pasting.
• Discord and Slack. Wrap the banner in triple backticks so the chat uses a fixed-width font.

The hash, star and at sign are plain keyboard characters and are safe anywhere. The block character is a Unicode symbol that some fixed-width fonts lack, and in others the rows show thin gaps. The tool is not FIGlet, so there is one font and no lowercase shapes, outlines or colours. For large lettering that does not need a fixed-width font, try the wide text generator or the bold text generator.