Wingdings

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Sample


Typeface	Wingdings
Category	Symbol
Designer(s)	Charles Bigelow Kris Holmes
Foundry	Bigelow and Holmes, Microsoft Corp.

Wingdings is a TrueType dingbat font included in all versions of Microsoft Windows starting with version 3.1.

This font was originally developed in 1990 by Microsoft Corp. by combining characters from several symbol sets licensed from Bigelow and Holmes. Certain versions of the font's copyright string includes an attribution to Type Solutions, Inc., the maker of a tool used to hint the font. Further Wingdings fonts have been developed, named Wingdings 2 and Wingdings 3. The Wingdings trademark is owned by Microsoft, and the glyph order was patented. The font contains many largely recognized shapes and gestures as well some recognized world symbols, such as the Star of David and the symbols of the Zodiac.

Mosaic of Wingdings characters

[edit] Controversies

Wingdings has a history of 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 Skull and crossbones symbol, Star of David, and thumbs up gesture. This could be interpreted as a message of approval of killing Jews, especially those from New York City. 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, is rendered as eye, heart, and city skyline, which could be interpreted as "I Love New York City". Microsoft has stated that this is intentional.)

An Internet phenomenon that spread after the September 11, 2001 attacks was that if the sequence "Q33NY" is typed in Wingdings, the Q becomes an aircraft, the threes become lined documents (which resemble skyscrapers), the N becomes a skull and crossbones, and the Y becomes the Star of David. The resulting graphics look like an aircraft preparing to impact the World Trade Center, with a message of death for those of Jewish faith. The "NY" stands for New York, and "Q33" allegedly was the designation of one of the aircraft. However, the theory that this has any valid non-accidental connection with the attacks falls apart under scrutiny: the terrorist attacks were not specifically directed at Jews, and none of the aircraft used on that day bore the designation of Q33. Another suggestion was that "Q33" was a reference to a bus route, typically alleged to be at the World Trade Center itself, or to one of the airports involved. In reality, bus route Q33 serves LaGuardia Airport, and none of the hijacked aircraft took off from or were heading to there.

Various other combinations of Wingdings characters are alleged to have special significance by conspiracy theorists, but these results are likely purely coincidental (notice that similar symbols are logically grouped), providing an easy example of identifying a conspiracy by induction^{[citation needed]}.

Despite these controversies, the font remained in Windows through XP and is distributed with Windows Vista.

Uniquely among typefaces, Wingdings often inspires nostalgic or ironic humor among today's generation of students, many of whom grew up playing with the font as they experimented with Microsoft Windows computers. Ann Arbor Wingdings Club, a student group on the University of Michigan campus, is an apparent manifestation of that phenomenon.