Labels can be rendered on a map displayed on a wireless communications device by using pre-rendered characters. The pre-rendered characters can be pre-rotated to one of a number of angular orientations and stored as a variable transparency bitmap for rapid overlaying on the map. The bitmap can include an array or grid of characters wherein each row has a unique orientation, for example, ranging from zero to ninety degrees. Rotations of 90 to 360 degrees can then be achieved by reflecting the characters about vertical or horizontal axes. Overlaying pre-rotated characters is more computationally efficient than computing rotations for each character when rendering the label.