TitleArt Rebuilds 1997-Era Microsoft WordArt in the Browser and Exports It as SVG, GIF or Video

The page title sets the terms: “Make text like it’s 1997.” Even the demo text on the canvas is WordArt, bent into a wave and promising “Every classic style, shape, and 3-D effect.” Pick a style from the gallery, type a word, and it curls into an arch, a button or a double wave, the same way it did on every school newsletter and garage sale flyer of the late ’90s.

It’s the work of Davey Barker, a creative technologist in London whose About box inside the app says simply, “I made TitleArt.” The whole interface leans into the bit, down to a Windows 98-styled About dialog and menus.

The menus are where it passes the original. Layers can move, and every layer shares one loop “so saved animations repeat seamlessly.” The export menu reads “Export as PNG, SVG, GIF or video.” SVG means the bent, shadowed lettering stays sharp at any size; the app is honest that “SVG is a still image,” so anything that moves goes out as GIF or video.

It also reaches well past 1997’s character set. The help text says the built-in fonts “cover Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and emoji.”

The privacy page is short and plain. TitleArt counts visits with Fathom, which it says “sets no cookies,” and “TitleArt has no adverts or other trackers.” Your work lives in your own browser’s storage, and the app spells out the catch: clearing the browser “deletes everything TitleArt saved. Keep project files if you want backups.”

That warning sits beside the terms, which say the tool “is provided as is, without a promise that it will always be available.” There’s a “Save All Pages as Project File” command, and no public source code linked anywhere in the app. If the site ever goes dark, the project files you saved have nothing left to open them.

Expect more faithful remakes of tools nobody would call good design, from the Paint spray can to the clip art gallery. The look is the draw, and the export is the reason to keep coming back: the 1997 effect, saved as a file that works in 2026. The ones that last will be the ones that let you take your work with you, in a format something else can open.