A lot of the clip art on the web is pretty tacky, as are the clip art collections you can still get on CDs.

One overlooked source of good clip art, which can really modernize and jazz up your page layouts, is dingbat or picture type fonts, such as Webdings and Wingdings. These both usually come with Windows machines, and I am certain the Mac has similar fonts, like Zapf dingbats.

1. Draw a text box on your page and select Webdings. Go to the Windows > Type and Tables > Glyphs (Alt-Shift-F11).

2. Select a glyph you want to work on. Let’s use the train. Double click on it and then paste in your text box. Make it big, say 360 points. Adjust frame to fit if you need to.

3. Select the train with the Text tool, go up to the Type menu and slide down to Create Outlines.

4. Switch to the Selection Arrow (the black one) and click on the train itself. Cut it (Ctrl-X). The train will disappear to the clipboard.

5.Now select the remaining text frame and delete it with Delete key.

6. Paste the train back onto the page (Ctrl-V).

7. If you want to use the black and white, you’re done. If you want to colorize the image, go to Object > Paths > Release Compound Paths.

8. Now all the various parts of the what is now art (and not a “letter”) are available for adjusting. To help you see them, while they are all still selected, give them a fill of none (Swatches) and a stroke of .25.

9. Then go ahead and add color. Use Ctrl click if the layers get in your way and Ctrl-Shift Click to select multiple items. I didn’t work too hard getting good colors on the example. Just wanted to show you how it was done. I also used a gradient and added a drop shadow.

10. Voila. Clip art!

There are a number of free dingbat fonts besides the Webdings and Wingdings already on your computer.

My favorite font is one with insects (see example). You can this and a bunch of others — most free — at http://www.fontgarden.com/dingbats/dingfonts.html

Put dingbat font or picture font in Google and you’ll find a few more. The nice part is you can make them as big as you want without losing quality and you can so easily change B&W to color.

Now you can dress up your blank, gray stories easily, making them more visually interesting with free clipart fonts. Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Handy dingbat fonts for newspaper design
2. Tip: Better shadows in Photoshop
3. Fixing an InDesign quirk