Wingdings Blog
Guides, history and puzzles about Wingdings and its sister fonts, from Undertale's W. D. Gaster to check boxes in Excel.
- Puzzles & Ciphers
Wingdings vs Morse Code vs Caesar Cipher
Wingdings is a font, Morse code a signalling code and the Caesar cipher a shift cipher. How they compare, and how to combine them for puzzles.
- Puzzles & Ciphers
Wingdings Cipher Classroom Activity: A 45 Minute Lesson
A ready to use 45 minute lesson that teaches substitution ciphers and frequency analysis with Wingdings, for ages 9 to 14, with extensions.
- Puzzles & Ciphers
10 Wingdings Escape Room Clue Ideas
Ten ready to use Wingdings clue ideas for escape rooms, scavenger hunts and parties, plus how to set the difficulty and print symbols clearly.
- How-To Guides
Cool Wingdings Symbols and What They Mean
The most useful Wingdings symbols by category: hands, faces, checks, office icons, weather and zodiac, with the key for each and its Unicode name.
- How-To Guides
Wingdings Font Download: Do You Need It, and Is It Legal?
Where Wingdings comes from, how to check if you already have it on Windows or Mac, the licensing risks of free downloads, and safer alternatives.
- How-To Guides
How to Decode Wingdings from a Picture or Screenshot
Read Wingdings from a screenshot, photo or video frame using a clickable symbol keyboard, the character chart, or by copying hidden text.
- How-To Guides
Wingdings on Discord, Instagram and WhatsApp: What Works
How to use Wingdings symbols in Discord, Instagram bios, WhatsApp and games, why the font trick fails, and how to stop symbols turning into emoji.
- How-To Guides
How to Write Secret Messages in Wingdings
Write a Wingdings secret message, make it harder to crack with five simple tricks, and send it so the symbols do not break on the way.
- How-To Guides
How to Make a Check Box with Wingdings in Word and Excel
Add check marks and check boxes in Word and Excel with Wingdings: Alt+0254, Insert Symbol, Developer check boxes, CHAR formulas and Unicode.
- History
From Printers’ Ornaments to Emoji: A Short History of Dingbat Fonts
What a dingbat is, how printers' ornaments became Zapf Dingbats, Wingdings and Webdings, and how Unicode turned picture fonts into real characters.
- History
Webdings vs Wingdings: Why Microsoft Made a Second Picture Font
Webdings was made in 1997 so web pages could show pictures without image files. How it differs from Wingdings, who designed it and the NYC easter egg.
- History
Who Designed Wingdings? Bigelow & Holmes and the Lucida Fonts
Wingdings was built by Microsoft in 1990 from Lucida Icons, Arrows and Stars by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. The full story and timeline.