A year ago I have developed a control module for interfacing a 8x8 dot matrix. At first I wanted to interface big matrix thus I needed to use a transistor stage for that. I was not lucky building that matrix, so I decided to use an 8x8 dotmatrix display off the shelf. Now I was able to build a reasonable PCB to mount the matrix display on.
You can build this on your own. Look into the pages at the right side.
For further information take a look into the Wiki.
I have created some basic patterns. You can look at them in the doc/-Directory.