How to Make a Cupcake on the Keyboard

While digital images help to convey visual information to your users, they can occasionally be heavy in terms of bandwidth usage. In addition, if you are sending images as part of an HTML e-mail, many clients will block them by default for security reasons. In instances like this, it can sometimes be helpful to use what is known as ASCII art, a graphic design technique that uses the printable characters of a fixed-width computer font to piece together recognisable images. Though it can take a long time to get an ASCII picture like a cupcake looking just right, patience and perseverance will eventually produce results.

Open a new document in your preferred text editor.

Set the font to a fixed-width typeface like Courier New.

Hit the space bar three times and type the following characters:

.-"""`"-.

Hit the "Enter" key once followed by the space bar two times and type the following characters:

/.'''.'.'`\

Hit the "Enter" key once followed by the space bar one time and type the following characters:

/.'.'.'`.'\

Hit the "Enter" key and type the following characters:

('.'.'.'.`'.)

Hit the "Enter" key once followed by the space bar one time and type the following characters:

~|||||||||||||~

Hit the "Enter" key once followed by the space bar two times and type the following characters:

|||||||||||||

Hit the "Enter" key once followed by the space bar two times and type the following characters:

"""""""""""

You have now successfully created an ASCII cupcake.