ASCII Art

Get cryptic with an Old Master

The Brief

Turn an Old Master into random text

Trim Size

US Letter/A4

Learning Points

  • Embracing the random

  • Working with fully justified text

Tools

InDesign

Fonts Used

Courier

Inspiration & Resources

pin.it/6olt10a

rumkin.com/tools/cipher/vigenere.php

Here’s a fun project that broadly comes under the category of Word Art, converting an image into a series of random characters. ASCII art has been around for a long time, and there are several websites that allow you to convert an image into ASCII art. I (Nigel) tried them all, but none gave me what I wanted — the ability to take the converted result and manipulate it in InDesign. So I had to come up with my own technique.

This technique works best on portraits, ...

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