by Hamish Long
Icons are a great way to add a graphical, professional look to documents. You might however think it would be time consuming sourcing such graphics but did you know that you’ve got a vast library of them right at your fingertips?
Open a new document in Word and then choose Insert > Symbol. Change the font to Webdings. You’ll now see a grid of all the available symbols – double-click a symbol to insert it into your document. As it’s a font character, you can change the size and colour as you would with any other font you were using in your document. You’ll find additional sets of symbols in the Wingdings, Wingdings 2 and Wingdings 3 fonts.
Here’s an example of what you might create:
A number of the symbols will appear illegible at small sizes because of the detail involved so you may have to experiment. If you have a good graphics package you will be able to make super-clear icons by adding an anti-alias to the symbol. Here’s an example of a set of icons I made using the symbols in Adobe Fireworks:
You may find this document that I have put together useful - Download symbolMaps.doc It contains the keyboard layouts (standard Western keyboard) of the shortcut keys to get to most of the symbols. Especially useful if you want to make icons in a graphics package as you probably won’t have access to an insert symbol command.
If you're having trouble tracking down the symbols then in Windows XP you can open the Character Map utility by selecting Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Character Map. On a Mac, choose Applications : Utilities : Key Caps.
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