Typekit makes thousands of commercial typefaces available for one fixed price. However unlike its free counterpart, Google Fonts, Typekit will not work locally without a server running.

If you are on a Mac or Linux, there is a one-line solution to run a local server so you can work with Typekit.

On the command line, navigate to the home directory of your website. Then type the following:

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

If you open a web browser with http://localhost:8000/ you will see a local server version of your website, with Typekit fonts working. Voila!

If you are not comfortable with the command line (or don’t know what that is), here are more detailed instructions.

  1. Open the Terminal Application Go to Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal.app

  2. Navigate to the directory of your website If you host your website on your desktop, this is as simple as going:

    cd desktop

  3. Then type the following line into Terminal and hit Enter:

    python -m SimpleHTTPServer

NOTE: The hardest part of this is step #2. Understanding the command line, and Terminal, is beyond the scope of this tutorial.

A final note is that while Python3 has an updated way to run a server locally, http.server this only works with Python3 which is not preinstalled on Mac OS X. Python2, which works with SimpleHTTPServer, is so it’s the preferred “quick and easy” choice for most developers.