We’re delighted to announce that Wood Type Revival – a Kickstarter-backed effort by Matt Braun and Matt Griffin to turn rare, historic wood type into digital fonts – has partnered with Typekit to bring these exciting display fonts to the web. Naturally, we are serving these designed-for-large-use faces with PostScript-based outlines so they look fantastic on Windows.

From the Wood Type Revival Kickstarter project page:

These wild old faces exist still in basements, garages, and attics — occasionally gasping for air on Ebay, before being swallowed up again, away from the public eye.

We wish to scour the globe for 10 of the most prized fonts of wood type we can acquire. And then we will print these faces on our trusty Vandercook proof press, and carry them over into the world of vectors and Opentype font-ery.

Already, Wood Type Revival has brought four wooden fonts to the web with finesse: Fatboy, French Clarendon Ornamented, Gothic Open Shaded, and Roycroft are now available in the Typekit library.

Fatboy

A hefty, rugged slab-serif, Fatboy packs a wallop. It’s great for capturing attention in big, short bursts. And the larger it’s used, the more prominent its negative space and irregular contours become. Fatboy’s thickness makes it a prime candidate for techniques like Trent Walton’s CSS Mask-Image & Text.

French Clarendon Ornamented

Charmingly condensed, with familiar nooks and notches, French Clarendon Ornamented is equal parts homegrown and hand-carved. Even at extremely large sizes, it is surprisingly efficient thanks to its narrowness, but will still be visible from across the room.

Gothic Open Shaded

Gothic Open Shaded makes a wonderfully simple and honest titling companion to text faces like Franklin Gothic, Schoolbook, and FF Dagny. It has just enough of a hand-tooled flavor to bring warmth and casualness to these historically pragmatic text faces.

Roycroft

With its high waist, sweeping limbs, and heartfelt idiosyncrasies, Roycroft feels like the epitome of the Arts and Crafts movement. It’s hard to imagine a typeface more appropriately representative of this style.

Upgrade to a Personal plan or higher for access to Wood Type Revival fonts. If you’re already a paying Typekit customer, enjoy the new fonts! If you’ve never given Typekit a try, sign up — it’s free! Upgrading is easy, whenever you’re ready.