Learning to Love the Jaggies: Designing Bitmapped Fonts

Date: October 21 2025

Instructor: Reg Beatty

Early digital type designers were challenged by having a limited grid of pixels to create their letterforms for computers, handheld devices, video and arcade games. These blocky fonts were one of the distinguishing features of the 70s through the 90s and are mostly used today for a retro look.

Join Reg as he tours the variety and ingenuity of these early types. He’ll concentrate on two designers: Susan Kare, who created Chicago (which became a defining font for the look of the Macintosh computer); and Zuzana Licko who co-founded Emigre Fonts in 1985 and designed a number of widely-used pixel fonts. He’ll also look at how these designers were inspired by letterforms on textiles. 

Reg will then demonstrate the process of making your own bitmapped font with BitFontMaker2.

For those of you that would like a more hands-on experience of the tool there will be a two hour workshop on Friday October 24 (see the following listing to register.)