Who Created Wingdings? The History of the Symbol Font
Behind every great mystery is a great creator. Wingdings may look like a strange accident of computing history — a font where typing your name produces smiley faces, arrows, and zodiac signs — but it was designed on purpose, by two of the most accomplished typographers of the 20th century. If you have ever wondered who created the Wingdings font, the answer is Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. Keep reading to discover the full story of who created the Wingdings font and why their work still matters today.
This is the full story of how Wingdings came to be: who Bigelow and Holmes are, how their symbol designs ended up inside Microsoft Windows, and what happened to the font family afterward. By the end, you will know exactly who created the Wingdings font — and why their work still matters today.
The Short Answer: Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes
Who created the Wingdings font? It was designed by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes, the founders of the type design studio Bigelow & Holmes Inc. Working in California, the pair created the symbol sets — originally called Lucida Icons, Lucida Arrows, and Lucida Stars — that Microsoft later licensed, combined, and renamed “Wingdings” for release with Windows 3.1 in 1992. For the encyclopedia’s overview, see the Wingdings article on Wikipedia — a great resource for anyone researching who created the Wingdings font.
Key fact: Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes are the answer to “who created the Wingdings font.” They were already world-famous typographers before Wingdings, best known for the Lucida typeface family used across the computing world.
Who Are Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes?
Charles Bigelow
Charles Bigelow is a type historian, designer, and professor whose career bridges the worlds of calligraphy, typography, and digital technology. He studied at Reed College and worked with some of the great figures of 20th-century type design. Bigelow taught typography at Stanford University and later at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he helped establish digital typography as a serious academic discipline. His deep knowledge of letterform history gave the pair’s designs their distinctive blend of classical craftsmanship and modern clarity.
Kris Holmes
Kris Holmes brought the designer’s hand to the partnership. Trained in calligraphy and graphic design, she had an exceptional eye for how letterforms and symbols actually look and feel at small sizes — a critical skill for screen fonts. Holmes drew and refined countless characters, giving Bigelow & Holmes designs their warmth and human touch. Together, the two formed one of the most productive partnerships in modern type design.
Bigelow & Holmes Inc. and the Lucida Family
Bigelow and Holmes founded their studio, Bigelow & Holmes Inc., in 1978. Their landmark achievement was the Lucida typeface family, first released in 1984 and commissioned with the needs of early laser printers and low-resolution screens in mind. Lucida was designed from the ground up for legibility in digital environments — a radical idea at the time. Visit the official Bigelow & Holmes website to explore their complete typeface catalog.
The Lucida family grew into one of the largest and most versatile typeface families ever made, including Lucida Serif, Lucida Sans, Lucida Console, Lucida Handwriting, and many more. If you have used a computer in the last forty years, you have almost certainly read text set in Lucida. The family’s success established Bigelow and Holmes as leading figures in digital typography — which is exactly why Microsoft came calling.
Alongside the Lucida text faces, the pair designed companion symbol fonts: Lucida Icons, Lucida Arrows, and Lucida Stars. These were professional-grade dingbat fonts containing the faces, arrows, hands, shapes, and ornaments that designers needed for documents and interfaces. They were the direct ancestors of Wingdings.
From Lucida Icons to Wingdings: How the Font Was Made
In 1990, Microsoft was preparing a major leap: the launch of TrueType, a new font technology developed with Apple that would let Windows display scalable fonts on screen and in print. Microsoft needed high-quality fonts to show off the technology — and it needed symbol fonts too, so users could add bullets, arrows, and ornaments to their documents.
Microsoft licensed the Lucida Icons, Lucida Arrows, and Lucida Stars designs from Bigelow & Holmes, combined the three symbol sets into a single font, and gave it a new name: Wingdings — a blend of “Windows” and “dingbats.” The font shipped with Windows 3.1 in 1992, putting 224 professionally designed symbols on millions of desktops overnight.
Did you know? When people ask who created the Wingdings font, some assume it was a Microsoft engineer’s side project. In reality, Microsoft licensed the designs from independent type designers — a common practice in the font industry, where a handful of specialist studios create the typefaces the whole world uses.
Wingdings 2, Wingdings 3, and Webdings
The success of Wingdings led to sequels, also rooted in the Bigelow & Holmes designs:
- Wingdings 2 (1992): More office-oriented symbols — checkmarks, crosses, boxed numbers, and additional arrows for forms and lists.
- Wingdings 3 (1993): Almost entirely arrows, designed for diagrams, flowcharts, and directional signage.
- Webdings (1997): A companion font for the internet era, designed by Vincent Connare — the same designer who created Comic Sans. Webdings featured web-themed icons like globes, computers, and cameras.
So while Bigelow and Holmes are the answer to who created the Wingdings font itself, Vincent Connare deserves credit for its web-age sibling, Webdings.
The NYC Urban Legend, Debunked
No history of Wingdings is complete without its most famous conspiracy theory. In the early days of the web, a rumor spread that typing “NYC” in Wingdings produced a skull, a Star of David, and a thumbs-up — supposedly “predicting” a real-world tragedy years before it happened. But the true story of who created the Wingdings font is far more interesting than any urban legend.
The truth is far less dramatic: the symbols assigned to the letters N, Y, and C are simply a skull, a Star of David, and a hand gesture — ordinary members of the font’s symbol collection, placed on those keys for design reasons that had nothing to do with any message. Microsoft has publicly debunked the theory. It remains a perfect example of how humans find patterns — and conspiracies — in randomness. Knowing who created the Wingdings font helps debunk the myth: professional type designers, not conspirators, drew every symbol.
Wingdings History Timeline
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 1978 | Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes found Bigelow & Holmes Inc. |
| 1984 | The Lucida typeface family is released, becoming a digital typography landmark. |
| 1990 | Microsoft licenses Lucida Icons, Arrows, and Stars for its new TrueType system. |
| 1992 | Wingdings ships with Windows 3.1; Wingdings 2 follows the same year. |
| 1993 | Wingdings 3 is released, focused on arrows. |
| 1997 | Vincent Connare designs Webdings for the internet era. |
| 2015 | Undertale features a character who “speaks” in Wingdings, introducing the font to a new generation. |
| Today | Wingdings remains bundled with Windows and beloved by puzzle fans worldwide. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Who created the Wingdings font?
The Wingdings font was created by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes, founders of Bigelow & Holmes Inc. Microsoft licensed their Lucida symbol designs in 1990 and released them as Wingdings with Windows 3.1 in 1992.
What company made Wingdings?
The designs were made by the independent studio Bigelow & Holmes Inc. Microsoft licensed, combined, and renamed the designs, then distributed the font with Windows.
When was Wingdings created?
The underlying symbol designs date to the 1980s as part of the Lucida project. Microsoft licensed them in 1990 and released Wingdings with Windows 3.1 in 1992.
Who designed Webdings?
Webdings was designed by Vincent Connare in 1997 — the same designer behind Comic Sans and Trebuchet MS. It was Microsoft’s internet-era companion to Wingdings.
Who created the Wingdings font and when?
The designers who created the Wingdings font, Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes, completed the Lucida symbol sets in the late 1980s; Microsoft licensed and released them as Wingdings with Windows 3.1 in 1992.
Want the quick version of what the font actually is? Read our complete guide on what Wingdings is, or explore every symbol on the Wingdings chart. Still curious about who created the Wingdings font? The timeline above covers every key milestone.
See Their Creation in Action
Now you know who created the Wingdings font — try the symbols yourself. Type any text and watch it transform into Bigelow and Holmes’ iconic designs.
