Free and open source, SIL Open Font License

Pictures you can type.

DingThat is three free dingbat style fonts. GUI draws boxes, windows and interface controls. Shapes has arrows, checks, crosses and media buttons. Objects has buildings, vehicles and everyday things. Press a key, get a picture.

Download the fonts
See every glyph

OTF, TTF and WOFF2. Free for personal and commercial use.

Three fonts, one keyboard

Every picture sits on a key. Install the fonts, choose one in any app, and type.

GUI

DingThat GUI

Single, double and rounded box lines, shade blocks, the classic PC symbols, and interface widgets: checkboxes, radio buttons, toggles, window buttons and progress bars. It’s monospaced, so frames line up.

See the GUI glyphs

Shapes

DingThat Shapes

Heavy arrows laid out like the number pad, triangles, stars and hearts, checks and crosses, maths signs and media controls.

See the Shapes glyphs

Objects

DingThat Objects

Houses, offices, shops and schools; cars, buses, trains, planes and boats; phones, laptops, calendars, weather and more.

See the Objects glyphs

A first look at the glyphs

Each tile shows the key to press and what you get. The Fonts page has the complete character maps.

DingThats GUI

Box drawing, blocks, PC symbols and widgets. Monospaced.

  • qcorner tl
  • wtee down
  • ecorner tr
  • atee right
  • scross
  • dtee left
  • zcorner bl
  • xtee up
  • ccorner br
  • 1shade light
  • pcheckbox
  • Pcheckbox on
  • vradio
  • Vradio on
  • Itoggle off
  • Otoggle on

DingThats Shapes

Geometry, arrows, checks, maths and media controls.

  • 8arrow up
  • 6arrow right
  • 4arrow left
  • 2arrow down
  • 0arrow left-right
  • vcheck
  • xcross
  • kstar
  • hheart
  • ccircle
  • ddiamond
  • ssquare
  • mmenu
  • ;pause
  • :stop
  • 'record

DingThats Objects

Buildings, transport, everyday objects and weather.

  • hhouse
  • ooffice
  • sshop
  • ffactory
  • ccar
  • bbus
  • ttrain
  • aairplane
  • pperson
  • eenvelope
  • Ffolder
  • Ccalendar
  • Ddesktop
  • Llaptop
  • Mmobile
  • Ssun
See all 267 glyphs

How to use them

  1. DownloadGet the zip from GitHub. It has every font in three formats, plus an SVG file for each glyph.
  2. InstallWindows: right-click a font file and choose Install. Mac: double-click it and choose Install Font.
  3. Choose a fontPick DingThat GUI, Shapes or Objects in Word, Pages, LibreOffice, Figma or any app with a font menu.
  4. Type a keyh gives a house, v a check mark, q the corner of a box. The Fonts page lists every key.

What every font includes

The same three fonts, ready for every place you might use them.

  • Desktop fonts for Windows, macOS and Linux, in both OpenType formats
  • A compressed web font, ready for @font-face on any site
  • Real Unicode symbols too, so text like ┌─┐, ★ and ✈ shows the DingThat picture
  • Every glyph as its own SVG file, for slides, apps and print
  • A monospaced GUI font, so boxes and frames line up exactly
  • Free to use, embed and change, in personal and commercial work

Free for any project

DingThat is released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1. Use the fonts in documents, apps, games, logos and websites, and bundle them with your own software. The one thing you can’t do is sell the fonts on their own.

Read about the licence

Open source

Every glyph is drawn by a short Python script, and the same script builds all the font files. Read it, suggest new glyphs or report a problem on GitHub.

View the source on GitHub

Ready to type?

After installing, restart your apps so they find the new fonts. On a website, hide decorative glyphs from screen readers with aria-hidden="true", and give meaningful ones a text label.

Download the fonts
Read the FAQ
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