It was designed to support the blackletter typeface that has a fixed stroke thickness representing adhesive paper tape; offering similar characteristics to a broad pen.

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Check out these 16 alternatives that will propel you to pictogram paradise.

Most memorable is David Carson s story of how, when designing for Ray Gun in 1994, he set an entire interview with Bryan Ferry in Zapf Dingbats, as Carson found the interview boring.

But no matter how much love Zapf Dingbats, as designers were always looking for alternatives to add versatility to our typography.

So whether you are looking to use a free font set of symbols in a conventional manner, or to push the boundaries of design like Carson, here is a selection of alternatives that might come in handy.

Stroke 7 font Stroke 7 symbol font was inspired by iOS 7 A custom symbol font with scalable vector icons, Stroke 7s thin stroke design was inspired by iOS 7.

The icon font includes 202 characters, all of which sport a very modern style that will beautifully complement a variety of projects.

Symbols1 Upgrade your fonts with this tech inspired set Created by Rebecca Fonts, the Symbols1 font set has definitely got a technological twist to it.

Made up of 25 characters that translate from a basic Latin alphabet, Symbols1 mainly focusses on computer icons like loading sandtimes and cursors.

But with sun and cloud symbols, theres a dash of nature to even things out.

Glyphyx One Glyphyx One contains nearly 100 symbols Designed by font design veteran Nick Curtis, the symbols in the Glyphyx One set are all based around transportation.

From cars to bikes, taxis to helicopters, this symbol font would be ideal for information graphics.

Dingbat Cobog The cobogs presents from the simplest shapes to more complex geometry pieces The Cobog is the inspiration for the digital font Dingbat Cobog designed by the brazilian graphic designer Guilherme Luigi.

The symbols were created from the synthesis of pierced elements found in photographs by Josivan Rodrigues for his book Cobog of Pernambuco.

Cittadino Dmitry Goloub wanted to improve the symbols on the Milan Metro map This free symbol font is a brilliant collection of pictograms, seemingly improving the diagrams already featured on the Milan Metro map.

Designed by Moscow based designer Dmitry Goloub, theres an upper case and lower case collection as well as a number series.

Rosette A gorgeous calligraphy inspired symbol font Designer Aga Silva is a converted font designer calligrapher.

Starting out as an architect and working full time in Architecture Business, she discovered the joys of using dip pen and some of this creativity has resulted in a number of symbol fonts - including this one.

Symbolmt Font Ther Download From Web

Web Hosting Hub glyphs Help yourself to over 155 high quality icons with this free download from Web Hosting Hub Created by Web Hosting Hub, this set of over 1500 high quality icons are easy to use with Bootstrap, other CSS frameworks and in any web projects.

They also work in desktop software such as Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft Word.

Symbol signs Creative designer Sander Baumann offers this set of 49 symbols as a free download In this free collection, Dutch creative designer Sander Baumann has included commonly used symbol signs for public services such as toilets, telephone, first aid, elevator, information, restaurant, cafe, smoking, baby, recycle icon, shower, reception desk, arrows collection and much, much more.

Rhomus Omnilots Choose from a variety of cool snowflake and arrow designs and geometric shapes This symbol set comes from the team at Typotheticals.

With over 120 glyphs to choose from, the set is predominantly snowflake and arrow designs as well as a few geometric shapes thrown in for good measure.

PizzaDude Bullets PizzaDude is a Danish designer living in Copenhagen whose name is taken from the Tom Hanks movie The Burbs.

Since 1998 he has been relentlessly producing typefaces, which now number more than 400.

In late 2002 PizzaDude decided to do commercial fonts but still creates freeware fonts every now and then.

PizzaDude Bullets includes smiley faces, arrows, eyes, stars and costs you nothing.

Kalocsai Flowers In a similar vein to the Efon set, this fragrant collection of 63 free symbol fonts was designed by Levi Halmos.

Its incredible that hes made such a beautifully produced collection of fonts free to download.

Heydings Common Icons Heydon Pickering is a web designer from Norwich, England who specialises in CSS, typography, semantic HTML and responsive design.

He was one of the first early innovators to release a completely free, embeddable icon font for web UI designers.

Its still available to download for free, and its still well worth doing so.

Heydings Controls In a blog post on Pickerings website he addresses the many advantages of using a web font (in place of images) to render icons into your UI design.

And to help you out further, hes create this fantastic collection of 60 glyphs specifically intended for the accessorization and classification of textual cues such as hyperlinks, navigation elements and buttons.

Web symbols Courtesy of Moscow based design agency Just Be Nice Studio there are some lovely renderings of oft-required symbols, including mail, wi-fi and and location icons in this set of 90 free symbol fonts.

Modern Pictograms Modern Pictograms is a typeface designed in early 2011 for interface designers and programmers.

Symbolmt Font Ther Code Into Your

The pictograms are web-ready so you can install the OpenType file for Photoshop mockups and drop in the font-face code into your CSS to embed them right in your web page.

This is a must-have for all designers, especially as its currently free.

Adhesive Nr. Seven Adhesive Nr.

Symbolmt Font Macther