This is awesome. When I was a child I typed ASCII art on my mothers two-color typewriter. Now, if I can retire and have a lot of free time, I may go to the typography museum in Leipzig and spend a few days typesetting an ASCII-fied "Tears in the rain" scene from Bladerunner.

The examples in the post are made as an intentional artistic endeavour / test of skill. But there were also practical reasons why a printer would make art out of bent brass rules and typographical elements: engraving, lithography and woodcut production were specialized professions separate from printing.

Imagine you are a "Job Printer" who needs to create 1,000 restaurant menus for a flat fee. You could pay an engraver to create basic art. Or you could cut costs by making your own art with typographical elements already at your shop. The outcome could be good: https://jacobfilipp.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/vol11-p55...

Saved the best for last: love the heavily "pixelated" birds and branches in the last image.

Looking at type specimens on archive.org this year I was actually getting frustrated with the opaqueness of what a brass rule actually is/was

It makes me wonder how much of our documentation nowadays will be incomprehensible in centuries’ time

> I was struck with a strange dream of trying to replicate his image using impractical typographic methods.

Computer Science academic born way ahead of their time.

This is OG ASCII art.

The name Malmiola is like a portmanteau of the surnames of Yngwie Malmsteen and Al Di Meola.