Webdings is a

TrueType TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating sy ...

dingbat In typography, a dingbat (sometimes more formally known as a printer's ornament or printer's character) is an ornament, specifically, a glyph used in typesetting, often employed to create box frames, (similar to box-drawing characters) or a ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are list of type ...

developed in 1997. It was initially distributed with

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

4.0, then as part of

Core fonts for the Web Core fonts for the Web was a project started by Microsoft in 1996 to create a standard pack of fonts for the World Wide Web. It included the proprietary fonts Andalé Mono, Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times Ne ...

, and is included in all versions of

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

since Windows 98. All of the

pictographic A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and ...

Webding

glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...

s that are not unifiable with existing

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

characters were added to the Unicode Standard when version 7.0 was released in June 2014.

Symbol types

There are some "categories" of symbols in Webdings; groups of similar symbols. Symbol trends like this in the font include weather icons, land with different structures built on top, vehicles and ICT. Symbols which are the Webdings equivalent of characters not available on an English keyboard also exist in the font (for example, the dove and Earth symbols). An unusual character in the font was the "man in business suit levitating", a humanized

exclamation point The exclamation mark, , or exclamation point (American English), is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or to show emphasis. The exclamation mark often marks the end of a sentence, f ...

. According to

Vincent Connare Vincent Connare (born September 26, 1960) is an American type designer and former Microsoft employee. Among his creations are the fonts Comic Sans and Trebuchet MS, as well as the Man in Business Suit Levitating emoji. Besides text typefaces, ...

, who designed the font, the character was intended as a nod to the logo of the British

ska Ska (; ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walki ...

record label 2 Tone Records. The character has since been adopted as an

emoji An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversat ...

: . Connare also designed the lightning bolt symbol to resemble the one on the cover of the

David Bowie David Robert Jones (8 January 194710 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie ( ), was an English singer-songwriter and actor. A leading figure in the music industry, he is regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the ...

album '' Aladdin Sane''. Following the

controversy Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view. The word was coined from the Latin ''controversia'', as a composite of ''controversus'' – "turned in an opposite d ...

over possible anti-Semitic messages in the

Wingdings Wingdings is a series of dingbat fonts that render letters as a variety of symbols. They were originally developed in 1990 by Microsoft by combining glyphs from Lucida Icons, Arrows, and Stars licensed from Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. Ce ...

font, Connare intentionally rendered the Webdings character sequence "NYC" as an eye, a heart, and a city skyline, referring to the

I Love New York I Love New York (stylized ) is a slogan, a logo, and a song that are the basis of an advertising campaign developed by the marketing firm of Wells, Rich, Greene under the directorship of Mary Wells Lawrence used since 1977 to promote tourism i ...

logo.MS Denies Wingding Thing, Again, Wired Magazine
/ref> Webdings-big

Character set

Vincent Connare

The man who created Webdings also created several other fonts including

Comic Sans Comic Sans MS is a sans-serif typeface designed by Vincent Connare and released in 1994 by Microsoft Corporation. It is a non-connecting script inspired by comic book lettering, intended for use in cartoon speech bubbles, as well as in other ca ...

and

Trebuchet MS Trebuchet MS is a humanist sans-serif typeface that Vincent Connare designed for Microsoft Corporation in 1996. Trebuchet MS was the font used for the window titles in the Windows XP default theme, succeeding MS Sans Serif and Tahoma. Release ...

. Webdings was created due to the demand of the new digital age; hence Connare was told to draft up a font that was "creative," "friendly" and "hand-drawn". Jennifer Niederst, author of "Web Design in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference," talks about Connare's work with type, including Webdings. Niederst states in her book, "These fonts have generous character spacing, large x-heights, and open, rounded features that make them better for online reading," which further comments on the kind of fonts Connare was told to create.

Opportunities

People such as Karl Pentzlin have proposed that dingbat typefaces, such as Webdings, be encoded to Apple devices or more handheld devices in general. There are also organizations and individuals such as Michal Suignard who have created proposals for Webdings to be encoded in the "international character encoding standard Unicode". Both of these proposal examples also include other dingbat typefaces such as Wingdings. Webdings has also been used to help create artwork. In the case of Pat Boas, it has been stated that in Boas's work titled, “Abstraction Machine,” she "began by typing 'poison' in the font called 'Webdings,'..." which helped Boas to create a painting that challenged the audience to de-code its meaning.Pat Boas Encryption Machine
/ref> Boas also notes how the artwork captures a dialouge between the Webdings typeface, which is based in logic, and the handpainted artwork, which is "sensuous".

References

External links

Webdings font information
(Microsoft typography)

(Microsoft typography)
Downloadable version of Webdings for Windows
(