I released Beat My Guest on February 9, 1999. The name came from the Adam and the Ants song of the same title, which matched the violent, chaotic tone I wanted. Unlike many of my digital experiments of the time, this typeface began with ink. I drew the letters using a mapping quill pen, letting the sharp point create ragged, distressed edges. The drawings were then scanned and converted into outlines for the font.
The result was a noisy, distressed design that carried a sense of abrasion and unease. It quickly found its place in horror-related work, where its rough texture suited posters, graphics, and other media tied to that genre.
Beat My Guest never received updates after its release. It was always free for commercial use, and in August 2020 I placed it in the public domain. It remains one of the few early fonts where the physical writing tool—the mapping quill—played as large a role as the digital process in shaping the final result.