The cuteness of Wingdings and Webdings

Back in the 90s and early 00s if you wanted an icon you would use a dingbat font like Wingdings or Webdings.

Todays icons are no longer dingbats, instead emojis have taken over. Emojis are a bit different from dingbats, because each emoji is it’s own unique unique character. You don’t type “H” for a smily face. Instead with emoji, you use a unique keyboard.

With Wingdings, the icons are in the regular QWERTY keyboard. If you wanted a smiley face with Wingdings, you type a “J”. Then style that J as the Wingdings font, and it transforms into a smily face. Frowny face is “L”, deadpan face is “K”.

It’s fun to dig back and use a Wingding icon. Funny to think that back in the 90s and 00s, we were using the precursor to emojis.

Today I was looking for a scissors icon, so I pulled up the ol’ trusty Wingdings. The character for scissors is a quote mark!

I love how the the quote mark looks like a pair of scissors. The quote mark has two marks, just like a pair of scissors is two blades. Very clever, Wingdings. Very clever. Now I’ll never look at the quote marks the same again.

The Webdings font has its own fun. When you string together ABCDEFGHIJK in Webdings, the icons together looks like a little town. Check out how the horizon line stays consistent, and there is no space between each icon. They look like they are all in the same town! OH MAN, I’M FALLING OVER IN CUTENESS.

Although the “A” is a little scary. It almost looks like a noose. But it’s really a poorly drawn construction crane. M and PQRST continues the little town.

Although somehow the L is a search icon. N is eyes, O is an ear. I don’t know how those came into the sequence.