ASCII Bloom: an ASCII art gradient glowing in blue and cyan
ASCII Bloom turns a soft Mesh gradient into a grid of text characters, one per 16 px cell, each picked by how strongly that cell stands out from the midnight navy base. Faint areas get dots and colons, stronger ones asterisks, and the brightest cyan patch fills with rows of the letter o, while the denser &, 8, @ and # are held back for higher contrast. Every character keeps the gradient's own color, so the bloom still fades from royal blue to cyan the way the original mesh does.
Make it yours
Change the character size
Cell size is 16, so each character sits in a 16 px square. Drop it to 8 for dense, terminal-like text that reads as texture, or raise it to 32 for big, legible characters behind a sparse hero.
Print it in two colors
With Treatment colors on Duotone, the characters switch to the Dark color on a Light color background, and the densest ones land where the gradient is darkest, which suits light-mode pages.
FAQ
Can I copy the ASCII characters as text?
No. The characters are drawn into the image by the renderer, the same way the dots and lines of the other treatments are, so they are not selectable text. Export the look as a PNG at 1x to 3x for a still, or as HTML or JSON.
How it works
Pick a starting point
Start from one of 28 looks such as Soft Mesh, Eclipse Rays or Riso Halftone, or choose a gradient type and one of 24 palettes.
Tune the gradient
Adjust scale, distortion, swirl and softness, add grain, glass panes or glass tiles, a dot, grid or line overlay, a second blended layer or a treatment such as halftone or pixel sort, and switch animation on with its own speed.
Preview and use it
See the gradient in landing page, card, mobile and sign up layouts, then sign in with a free UX Pilot account to use it on the canvas or export it.