Some dingbat fonts can be used to generate borders, and were in fact designed for that. These border fonts have corner elements, as well as horizontal and vertical elements. By simply typing them one after the other, you can create a border of any size. Good examples include Font Diner's , DSType's , and ITC’s by Monotype and others. Linotype’s includes several border fonts, along with decorative dingbats.

Fortunately, you can make a border out of almost any dingbat font -- if you're clever. Here's the trick: many design applications let you type characters onto a path, so you can create a path using any of the program's object drawing tools, convert the object to a text path, and then type a dingbat character along that path.

If you look on the Web, you'll find dingbat fonts that are free, but their quality can range from excellent to embarrassing. Using a tool such as FontLab's ($30), anyone can create a dingbat font from their own drawings. I've seen everything from toy trains to ghouls and spiders, game characters, realistic flowers and leaves, geometric designs, African and Asian ornaments, artists' signatures, logo collections, postage stamps, and road signs. One source that collects free dingbat fonts is .

With a little exploration into your fonts and a little creative spark, dingbats can make your typographic designs come alive -- try making one huge and giving it a light tint of a color. Place that behind another page element, perhaps hanging off the edge of the page. Dingbats also make attractive motifs -- just repeat one glyph over and over to fill an area. Your ho-hum text page will suddenly become much more inviting to read!