What Is Webdings?

What Is Webdings? Webdings is a symbol-based font created by Microsoft in 1997. It consists of various pictograms, icons, and symbols designed to be used as decorative elements rather than readable text. Similar to Wingdings, Webdings allows users to insert visual symbols without relying on image files, making it a lightweight and scalable alternative for digital documents.

The Birth of Webdings

In the late 90s, Microsoft sought to expand its collection of dingbat fonts beyond Wingdings. The company enlisted type designer Vincent Connare—best known for creating Comic Sans—to work on Webdings. The goal was to create a fresh set of symbols that would complement the growing digital landscape and cater to new web design trends.

Why Was Webdings Created?

Back in the 90s, adding images to documents and websites was challenging due to limited storage and slow internet speeds. Webdings provided a way to use graphical elements without increasing file sizes. Its symbols included:

• Technology icons (computers, floppy disks, and mice)
• Transportation symbols (airplanes, cars, and bicycles)
• Communication icons (mailboxes and telephones)
• Miscellaneous pictograms (eyes, hands, and arrows)

By embedding these symbols into a font, Webdings allowed designers and typographers to enhance documents with visual elements while keeping them text-based.

The Connection Between Webdings and Wingdings

Webdings is often mistaken for an extension of Wingdings, but the two have distinct symbol sets. While Wingdings was designed to be a universal dingbat font featuring a mix of arrows, shapes, and objects, Webdings was intended to be more modern and web-friendly. The font features cleaner, more structured pictograms that align with web design needs.

Wingding Examples:

The Webdings Conspiracy Theory

Like Wingdings, Webdings also found itself at the center of a bizarre conspiracy theory. Some users claimed that typing certain words in Webdings produced symbols with hidden messages. However, these were purely coincidental results of the font’s character mapping rather than intentional subliminal messaging.

How Webdings Influenced Modern Iconography

Webdings played a crucial role in the evolution of digital iconography. Many of its symbols later appeared in Unicode and influenced emoji design. Today, similar pictograms are widely used in modern fonts and web interfaces.

Is Webdings Still Relevant Today?

Although Webdings is no longer commonly used, its legacy lives on in icon fonts such as Font Awesome and Google’s Material Icons. The idea of using a font to display scalable icons remains popular in web development and digital typography.

FAQs

What language is Webdings?

Webdings is not a language but a dingbat font that represents symbols instead of letters. It was designed to provide pictorial icons for digital use.

How to use Webdings in Excel?

To use Webdings in Excel:

• Select a cell where you want the symbol.
• Change the font to Webdings.
• Type a letter or number, and Excel will display the corresponding Webdings symbol.

How do you insert Webdings?

To insert Webdings in Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint:

• Select the text area where you want the symbol.
• Change the font to Webdings from the font dropdown menu.
• Type a letter, and the corresponding symbol will appear.
• Alternatively, use the ‘Insert’ tab, go to ‘Symbols’, and select a Webdings character.

How to type in Wingdings?

Typing in Wingdings follows the same method as Webdings:

• Change your font to Wingdings in any text editor.
• Type any letter or number to see its corresponding symbol.
• If you want to convert Wingdings symbols back to English or vice versa, use our Wingdings Translator, which makes it easy to decode and encode messages with Wingdings symbols!

Conclusion

Webdings may not be as widely recognized as emojis, but it paved the way for modern digital symbols. Created as a practical solution for the limitations of early digital design, it remains an important piece of typographic history. Even if we don’t use Webdings daily, its influence can be seen in every icon set and emoji keyboard we interact with today.