Toronto Metropolitan University
Centre for Digital Humanities
October 2025
- CDH events are open to the TMU community and beyond.
- Also, check out the workshops hosted by the Collaboratory!
The Centre for Digital Humanities (CDH) is temporarily located on the 4th floor of the Podium (POD) building (where the School of Law is currently situated) and is planning to have a permanent home in the Library building (LIB) in the future. CDH events are held virtually (on Zoom) and in-person in the TMU Libraries’ Collaboratory.
Join us! If you have an idea for a CDH-hosted event or a question, please contact CDH Director Jason Boyd (jason.boyd@torontomu.ca) or CDH Manager Reg Beatty (rbeatty@torontomu.ca).
CDH Virtual
Drop-Ins
Each month, weekly drop-ins will be dedicated to a specific theme. Tiny Tools Tour, Web Walks, and DH Workbench are explorations of a digital resource or tool for research, creativity, and/or teaching. Stories in Play features discussion of entries in the Playable Stories Archive and episodes of the Playable Stories: Unarchived podcast, both of which are focused on storytelling in games. Reading Bytes is a reading group for discussion of published digital humanities scholarship. DH@TMU Talks feature CDH members presenting their research.
TINY TOOLS TOUR
Tuesday October 21
noon-1:00pm EDT on Zoom
Learning to Love the Jaggies: designing bitmapped fonts
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 influential 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.)
This session (along with the workshop on Oct. 24), can be counted towards the Canadian Certificate in Digital Humanities (ccdhhn.ca).
DH WORKBENCH
Friday October 24
10am-noon EDT on Zoom
Bitmapped Font Workshop
Reg Beatty
Join Reg in this two hour hands-on workshop on how to design a bitmapped font using BitFontMaker2. We’ll talk about the rudiments of type design, the specifics of pixel fonts, and how to publish and use your new font.
This workshop can be counted towards the Canadian Certificate in Digital Humanities (ccdhhn.ca).
DH SPOOKINESS
Tuesday October 28
Noon-1:00pm EDT on Zoom
Special Halloween Drop-In
Jason Boyd
Join Jason for a playthrough of Chandler Groover’s Bring Me a Head! (2016)—a grotesquely funny head-finding Twine game.