Teletext Art

テレテキスト・アート / 1974–2012 / revival / Style / Lettering

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.

Teletext Art — Teletext colour test screen — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Teletext colour test screen — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Teletext Art — Teletext screen — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Onolweb — Teletext screen — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Onolweb

Teletext Art — イタリアのテレテキスト画面 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Onolweb — イタリアのテレテキスト画面 — Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · © Onolweb

At a glance

Visual cues

Eight-color mosaic
The 40x24 frame
Pseudo-curves from blocks
The look of broadcast infrastructure

Best used for

Moving announcement screens for music or shows that sell constraint
Stream backdrops and looping standby screens before a show starts

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Dictionary entry

Type: One monospaced face only, hierarchy from double-height headings
Composition: Everything inside forty columns and twenty four rows, on the grid
Material: Eight-color block mosaic, dithering faking intermediate tones
Caution: Raising the resolution to smooth the drawing removes the necessity behind the coarseness and leaves a merely retro-looking picture.
Further study: BBC Ceefax pages / the International Teletext Art Festival / contemporary artists like Dan Farrimond

Related entries

ANSI Art (BBS Scene) (ANSIアート)Same Lettering lineage.Compare Teletext Art and ANSI Art (BBS Scene)
Test Card (テストパターン)Shared effects: Technique / Nostalgia.Compare Teletext Art and Test Card

Often confused with

Minitel Service Screen (ミニテルのサービス画面)compare

Cite this entry

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Link: https://indexstyle.org/styles/teletext-art
Markdown: [Teletext Art — IndexStyle](https://indexstyle.org/styles/teletext-art)
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