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Wingdings Bold

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
April 23, 2017
3 replies
6048 views

Working on converting a clients files from Quark. When I go to open it InDesign the program says I'm missing "Wingdings Bold." Between Typekit, fonts.com, myfonts.com, and Google, I can't seem to find a bold version of wingdings anywhere. Am I missing somethng?

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Correct answer Dov Isaacs

Confirming. There is no such font as WIngdings Bold.

As others earlier in this thread have indicated, QuarkXPress and other applications including Microsoft Office applications fake missing styles, often without advising you. Thus, if a particular typeface family has only a regular style, italic is synthesized by obliquing the characters styled with italic. Bold is synthesized by not only filling the character's outline, but by also stroking it. Bold italic is synthesized by both obliquing and stroking the outline. Sometimes such font manipulation works; sometimes is looks awful. It depends on the design of the original font and the degree to which you attempt such artificial synthesis.

The solution to your particular issue is to change the Wingdings Bold to Wingdings Regular. Then, select the text formatted in Wingdings Regular and apply a color and width to the outline of the text. Keep that width subtle. Perhaps, 0.5pt outline on 12pt text. You'll need to experiment and see how that works both for display and print.

- Dov

Erica Gamet

Inspiring

Ah, yes, the old, "But my word processing software has the bold version of this script, why doesn't your fancy software?" line. Except in this case, as Dov pointed out, it was actually another page layout software. Even though it sometimes is frustrating when you're feverishly pressing your bold key command and the type isn't bolding (because you don't have the bold font loaded or it doesn't exist), I love that InDesign doesn't let you fall into that trap!

Dov Isaacs

Legend

Ironically, in the older days of word processing and print drivers, what I can best describe as “faux bold” was done not by outlining the filled character (since many of the older printers didn't have “outline fonts”) but rather, by overprinting. The character was printed once, followed by overprint approximately 1/300 of an inch to the right of the original character, followed by a second overprint another 1/300 of an inch to the right (substitute 1/300 for the addressable resolution of the device) giving the perception of boldness.

- Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)

Erica Gamet

Inspiring

Back when so much of those little tricks could be pawned off on the stripper/camera operator or pressman. When I started (using a CG typesetter), I didn't even know what trapping was, because it wasn't my job! Haha!

BobLevine

Community Expert

AFAIK, there is no such font. Some applications will fake it but InDesign will not.

Just replace it with regular wingdings.

Dov IsaacsCorrect answer

Legend

Confirming. There is no such font as WIngdings Bold.

As others earlier in this thread have indicated, QuarkXPress and other applications including Microsoft Office applications fake missing styles, often without advising you. Thus, if a particular typeface family has only a regular style, italic is synthesized by obliquing the characters styled with italic. Bold is synthesized by not only filling the character's outline, but by also stroking it. Bold italic is synthesized by both obliquing and stroking the outline. Sometimes such font manipulation works; sometimes is looks awful. It depends on the design of the original font and the degree to which you attempt such artificial synthesis.

The solution to your particular issue is to change the Wingdings Bold to Wingdings Regular. Then, select the text formatted in Wingdings Regular and apply a color and width to the outline of the text. Keep that width subtle. Perhaps, 0.5pt outline on 12pt text. You'll need to experiment and see how that works both for display and print.

- Dov

- Dov Isaacs, former Adobe Principal Scientist (April 30, 1990 - May 30, 2021)

E

Elsie2

Participating Frequently

Dov, thank you for your suggestion on addiing a color and adjusting stroke width to achieve the bold effect. Just what I was looking for!

Jongware

Community Expert

Do you see an unexpected character where this font got applied, or – after all, it is Wingdings – could it be a reasonable one? Other than InDesign, Quark happily obliges when someone applies "Bold" to a font of which there is no bold version, and the same for "Italics".

You can safely change that text to be non-bold to get rid of the warning.

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