Wingdings are a series of
dingbat fonts which 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. Certain versions of the font's copyright string include an attribution to Type Solutions, Inc., the maker of a tool used to
hint the font.
Wingdings
Wingdings is a
TrueType dingbat font included in all versions of
Microsoft Windows starting with version 3.1.
The Wingdings trademark is owned by Microsoft, and the glyph order was patented. This font contains many largely recognized shapes and gestures as well as some recognized world symbols, such as the Star of David and the symbols of the Zodiac. The font is not mapped to Unicode, although many of its symbols are available in that system.
Wingdings 2
Wingdings 2 is a
TrueType font distributed, for example, with
Microsoft Office. The font was developed in 1990 by Type Solutions, Inc. Now the
copyright holder is
Microsoft Corp. Among the features of Wingdings 2 include 16 forms of the
index,
Enclosed Alphanumerics from 0 to 10, multiple forms of
ampersand and
interrobang, several geometric shapes and an
asterism. The font is not mapped to
Unicode.
Wingdings 3
Wingdings 3 is a
TrueType dingbat font distributed together with
Microsoft Office.
The font was originally developed in 1990 by Type Solutions, Inc. Currently, the copyright holder is Microsoft Corporation. Wingdings 3 consists entirely of arrow variations.
Controversy
In 1992, only days after the release of Windows 3.1, it was discovered that the character sequence "NYC" in Wingdings was rendered as a
skull and crossbones symbol,
Star of David, and
thumbs up gesture. This was often interpreted as an
antisemitic message. Microsoft strongly denied this was intentional, and insisted that the final arrangement of the glyphs in the font was largely random. (The character sequence "NYC" in the later-released
Webdings font, in turn, was intentionally rendered as eye, heart, and city skyline, referring to the
I Love New York logo.)
See also
Webdings
Unicode symbols
Guttman Logo 1
References
External links
Wingdings font family information: Wingdings, (Microsoft typography)
Font Chart for Wingdings and Webdings
Wingdings character set and equivalent Unicode characters (Alan Wood's Unicode Resources)
Glasner, Joanna. "MS Denies Wingding Thing, Again", Wired News. September 22, 2001. Retrieved February 9, 2006.
Mikkelson, Barbara and David P. Snopes Urban Legends: "September 11: Wingdings", Snopes.com. December 11, 2005. Retrieved February 9, 2006.
Category:Symbol typefaces
Category:1990 introductions
Category:Windows XP typefaces
