Curious are the miscellaneous dingbat fonts, for most characters contain a picture. They range from vintage folk art to blocks, decorative ornaments, lava lamps and the coveted western glyphs displaying words. For part 2 of the dingbats posts I was surprised to find what appears to be a grungy French calligraphy border frames font. Whatever the use, for design or just looking, dingbats are an intriguing typographic art form.
To get an idea of how dingbats worked before the age of digitization, check out the gorgeous images of a letterpress shop: Scenes from a Letterpress Printshop — My Beautiful Old Lead Type Is for Sale.
Warning: If you go and download them all, I highly suggest using some sort of font manager, as a lot of these can be very graphics/processor intensive. Nexus Font is what I use in windows, and it allows you to use font sets on a per need basis without installing them on your computer. If you run linux, you can run fontmatrix or create a folder called .fonts in your home directory (use ctrl-H to show hidden dot files). You can switch them out on a per need basis this way manually by just renaming your working font folder to .fonts. Here’s a myfonts list by os.Post Image Book Cover Texture by: Lost Thyme
Was Woodcuts by: Manfred Klein
Griffin Bats by: David Rakowski
My 70’s Ding by: Blue Vinyl Fonts
Design 5 Font by: Digital Magic
Lots of Frames by: Darrian Lynx
Social Icons Font by: Ptocheia
Design 6 Font by: Digital Magic
Medieval Dingbats by: Lord Kyl Mackay
Damask Dings by: Nymphont
Schluss Vignetten Font by: Dieter Steffmann
Kaloscai Flowers by: Levi Halmos
Jade Dingbats Font by: Jade Gordon
Wmdesigns2 by: Karla Willymac
Darrian’s Frames Font by: Darrian Lynx
Interesting Links:
Dingbat Derivation | History of ornaments in Typography | History of TypesettingA Capsule History of Typesetting | A Brief History of Type | History of Western TypographyMoveable Type | Pictoral Reference
