What Is Teletext Art and How Should I Read the Pieces on Make Today Colourful?

Updated

Teletext art is picture-making within the strict limits of the teletext system: a low-resolution, block-based format that once carried news and information to television screens. On Make Today Colourful, each piece is a teletext artwork made for the #WeeklyTeletextArt prompt, and the site pairs every image with a short description. The most reliable way to read a piece is to look at the picture first, then read its description to confirm what the limited shapes and colours are meant to show.

What teletext art actually is

Teletext was an early television information service. Its screen was built from a coarse grid of character cells, so images had to be assembled from blocks, simple graphics shapes, and a small palette of strong colours. That constraint is the medium's signature: flat colour fields, chunky edges, and a slightly pixelated look.

The pieces on Make Today Colourful work inside those rules rather than around them. The site describes them as "Teletext artwork for #WeeklyTeletextArt," and the descriptions repeatedly refer to the format's own vocabulary — "graphics mode," "level 2.5 shapes," and "black and white teletext."

How to read a piece: picture first, description second

Because teletext shapes are abstract, the caption is part of the work. A practical reading order:

  1. Scan the whole image for the dominant colour blocks and the overall layout.
  2. Find the subject — a house, a watch, a spaceship, an octopus.
  3. Read the description to see which details the artist intended, especially small elements that are easy to miss.
  4. Re-look at the image with those details in mind.

For example, the "Barbecue" piece shows three terraced houses with roller blinds matching their doors — cyan, white, and magenta — plus birds in a cloudless sky. The people are never visible; the scene is carried by speech: someone in the middle house asks, "Shall we have a barbecue?" while neighbours answer, "Bring the washing in!" and "Let's go to the park!" Without the description, the joke is invisible.

What the pieces on the site look like

The works share a house style but vary in technique:

Piece Format notes What to look for
Barbecue Teletext artwork, colour blocks Matching door and blind colours; dialogue carried in text
Time Machine Watch Digital watch rendered in teletext Time reads six thirteen and forty seconds — the moment the artist started
Spaceship Collaboration with Dan Farrimond, "Level 2.5" Zeroes used as smoke; rocket built from level 2.5 shapes
Octopus Suitcase Black-and-white spoof advert An octopus packing a toothbrush, t-shirt, penguin toy, and a "Teletext Specification" document
The Mechanical Turk Teletext animation A fake automaton in a red jacket moves a chess piece and smiles

Two details are worth knowing. First, the "Spaceship" piece is a collaboration: Dan Farrimond drew the ship at Level 1, and the site's author added Level 2.5 elements — a reminder that teletext art has levels of graphical capability, and artists often build on each other's work. Second, "The Mechanical Turk" is described as an animation, so the smile appears as the dummy moves the piece; a still frame will only show part of the effect.

Why the descriptions matter so much

Teletext's resolution is too low for fine detail, so artists rely on suggestion: a few blocks become a suitcase, a row of shapes becomes a terraced street. The site's descriptions act as a key, naming the objects and quoting the text that appears on screen. They also record context a viewer could not guess — that the watch shows the exact time the piece was started, or that the octopus advert is a spoof "not endorsed by Ceefax Holidays."

If you are browsing the archive, read the description before deciding a piece is too abstract; the caption usually resolves it. The site's posts are paginated (Page 1 through Page 13 and beyond), so older pieces are reached through the page navigation at the bottom of the listing.

Getting more out of the collection

  • Compare pieces by constraint. The black-and-white "Octopus Suitcase" and the full-colour "Barbecue" show how much changes when the palette shrinks.
  • Follow the prompt. Searching #WeeklyTeletextArt will surface work by other artists in the same format, which makes the house style easier to see.
  • Treat animations as animations. Where a piece is described as an animation, the movement is part of the joke.
  • Use the descriptions as captions, not spoilers. They tell you what the artist meant, which is the point of a format this compressed.

The site presents itself as "Poetry and pictures to brighten your day," and the teletext pieces fit that framing: small, self-contained visual jokes and scenes that reward a second look once you know what you are looking at.