Wingdings is a series of dingbat fonts that render letters as a variety of symbols. They were originally developed in 1990 by Microsoft by combining glyphs from Lucida Icons, Arrows, and Stars licensed from Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes.

Why was Wingdings font created?

It used to be much harder to use pictures from the internet. Images were difficult to find and too large to download, and they didn't play nicely next to text. As a solution, Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes invented Wingdings to create a way to use images quickly and easily, that would harmonise with text.

Where did Wingdings originate from?

Wingdings got its name from printers' dingbats

When using a printing press, printers needed a shortcut when it came to ornamenting their text. Every figure or letter had to be hand-carved and laid out before anything could be printed, so it was too laborious to make a new template for every drawing or figure.