Easy as Pi

Back in the days of hand-set type, all the little character blocks for a given point size of a typeface were stored in drawers divided neatly into sections, one cubby for each character. In these type cabinets, majuscules–capitals–were stored in the upper case, and minuscules were stored in the lower case. As with any drawer, when pulled out of its case too far, a font drawer would drop and spill its contents all over the floor. The resulting mess what was called a pi, and to pi a font was considered very bad form.
From this use of the term pi to represent a jumble comes the term pi font, a catch-all category for fonts containing an unpredictable mix of symbols, special-use characters, border elements, decorations, whatever. The category is also known as dingbats, ornaments, symbols, and picture fonts.
Pi Fonts You Already Own
Windows and the Mac OS come with a handful of more or less useful pi fonts. These include Symbol, Webdings, and Wingdings 1, 2, and 3.
Symbol is mainly a math pi font, with a handful of more commonly needed symbols, including primes (for inches/feet, hours/minutes) and minus and multiplication signs.
Figure 1: Common shortcuts replace hyphens and xs for minus and multiplication signs; typewriter-style quotation marks often stand in for primes. But as you can see here, there’s no substitute for the genuine article.

For everyday typesetting needs, Webdings doesn’t have much to offer, although it’s the only font I know of with images of both a martini glass and a chipmunk. Webdings 1 and 2 are cluttered with a lot of rarely useful symbols, but they’re notable for their three sizes of bullets and ballot boxes. I use Windings 1 mainly for the Mac command symbol you get by typing z. Wingdings 2 also has a range of solid and open shapes that can be used as alternatives to bullets and boxes for calling out items in a list. Wingdings 3 is all arrows and triangles that can be used as pointers.
Mac users also get the sprawling Apple Symbols font. Its hundreds of symbols include border elements, arrows, chess and astrology symbols, and biohazard warnings.
Figure 2: Apple Symbol is a paragon of ecumenism and inclusiveness, with images indicating major religions and beliefs, sexual orientations, divination symbols, and secular pastimes such as the coffee break.

Figure 3: Charcoal is a seldom-used Macintosh text font that contains some handy glyphs, including keyboard symbols and the Mac command-key symbol.

But my candidate for the most useful pi font of all is the venerable but awkwardly named Universal News with Commercial Pi (www.linotype.com). It’s an oldie created by Linotype for its early-generation phototypesetters, and while it contains fewer than 100 symbols, they’re ones you use most often. Having them all in one place is a boon.
Its highlights include three sizes of bullet and ballot boxes, and stars in both solid and outline format. It also contains common math symbols, including multiplication and minus signs in both medium and bold weight (the latter being as rare as hen’s teeth). You’ll also find primes in both medium and bold, another rarity.
Figure 4: The complete glyph set of Universal News and Commercial Pi covers all the most commonly used pi characters, often in two weights.

Figure 5: Universal News and Commercial Pi also contains the following four linking, base-aligned rectangles that I haven’t found a use for yet, but I’m sure will come in handy some day.

Any of the large character-set text fonts that come with your operating system will have a collection of unusual symbols that you might find useful. These faces include Arial, Geneva, and Lucida Grande on the Mac, and Arial and Lucida Sans Unicode on a Windows PC. Use Font Book (Mac) or Character Map (Windows) to check out the contents of these fonts.
The Wide, Weird World of Pi Fonts
There are hundreds of pi fonts, some specially designed for those who write bridge or chess columns for the newspapers, those who print washing instructions on clothing labels, or those who run a German railroad. There are also scads of more versatile, general-purpose pi fonts, as well as many that seem to serve no purpose whatsoever. On the other hand, maybe you really do need a font containing tiny images of major household appliances. To find these, go to any major font-sales web site and search using the key word “symbols.”
Here are a handful of samples that represent a wee sliver of the possibilities.
Figure 6: Why create your own smears and splatters, when you can buy them off the shelf?

Figure 7: Just say “no” to boring bullets with a fontload of jazzy alternatives.

Figure 8: Whether you like animals as pets or as meals, having a font full of domestic, barnyard, and wild animal images can bring life to your pages.

Figure 9: Push-button greeting cards, thanks to a font full of pre-designed tag lines.

Figure 10: Look out! Explosions, radioactivity, high voltage, corrosives, and much, much more to warn about.

Figure 11: Why settle for those same old Zapf Dingbat pointing fingers when there’s a whole font full of alternatives?

Figure 12: ITC has a wide selection of multi-purpose symbol fonts, from sketchy to detailed, and from mainstream to offbeat.

It’s possible to wile away an entire day paging through pi fonts on the Web. (Trust me, I know.) For typographic decoration or for images that can be used as icons or in listings headings or as simple graphic punctuation, the right pi font can be just the spice your pages need.
 

James Felici has worked in the publishing industry for over 30 years. He is the former managing editor of Publish magazine, and written for PC World, Macworld, and The Seybold Report. A renowned type expert, he is the author of The Complete Manual of Typography.
  • Anonymous says:

    I completely agree regarding the value of this one font. I use one of the ballot boxes ALL the time! I don’t really care for the drop shadow boxes of Zapf Dingbats but the crisp clean check boxes that I get from Universal News are perfect for my job. Creating a lot of forms, that box get used all the time.
    Jennie R

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