ANSI Art (BBS Scene) vs Teletext Art
ANSIアート / テレテキスト・アート
Both sit in Lettering, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
ANSI Art (BBS Scene)
Login screens and group art packs drawn in the 16-color text mode of the BBS age. Block-character shading and inter-group competition made the summit of pre-web screen decoration.
Teletext Art
Screen art made inside broadcast text, a mosaic of 40 by 24 characters in eight fixed colors. The extreme abstraction of Ceefax weather maps and news pages is being revived now as a classic of constraint.
| ANSI Art (BBS Scene) | Teletext Art | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1985–1997 | 1974–2012 / revival |
| Family | Lettering | Lettering |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | 16-color text mode / Shaded block characters / Art-group signatures / The login-screen format | Eight-color mosaic / The 40x24 frame / Pseudo-curves from blocks / The look of broadcast infrastructure |
| Best used for | Decorating a splash screen or heading where only characters are available · Bringing signature and crew credit into a distributed pack of work | Moving announcement screens for music or shows that sell constraint · Stream backdrops and looping standby screens before a show starts |
| Type | Letterforms built from block characters and completed with box-drawing pieces | One monospaced face only, hierarchy from double-height headings |
| Composition | Eighty columns respected while the vertical runs on like a scroll | Everything inside forty columns and twenty four rows, on the grid |
| Material | Sixteen foreground and eight background colors, shading made by character density | Eight-color block mosaic, dithering faking intermediate tones |
| Caution | Shown in a proportional environment the columns break and the picture is gone, so building without fixing display conditions destroys it. | Raising the resolution to smooth the drawing removes the necessity behind the coarseness and leaves a merely retro-looking picture. |