ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the printable characters. The term is also loosely used to refer to text based visual art in general. 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 such as Courier for presentation.
ASCII Art can be easily generated with programs like figlet:
$ figlet ASCII-Art
_ ____ ____ ___ ___ _ _
/ \ / ___| / ___|_ _|_ _| / \ _ __| |_
/ _ \ \___ \| | | | | |_____ / _ \ | '__| __|
/ ___ \ ___) | |___ | | | |_____/ ___ \| | | |_
/_/ \_\____/ \____|___|___| /_/ \_\_| \__|
Generating geometric patterns (such as rectangles, triangles, circles, and stars) in ASCII art is also a common exercise in introductory programming courses.
