Dingbat Fonts

Typing Pictures

Dingbats AKA Symbol fonts AKA Pi fonts AKA Picture fonts AKA Clip Art fonts AKA Printer's Ornaments (how many aliases can a font have?) are typographic ornaments or graphics in digital font form. When you press A on your keyboard you might get a star or a happy face or a laughing dog or some other clever icon.

Dingbats can be decorative or functional. Dingbats can be used as bullets in a list, as an end sign at the end of a story, as separators, and as accents. Sometimes type designers will create a companion dingbat font to go with their normal ABC fonts. It may contain bullets, symbols, swashes, or other type embellishments in the same style as the character fonts.