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WHEN Spike Gjerde started to build a new restaurant in an old mill in Baltimore, he did not want a slick menu with crisp, perfect letters. ''We're all totally about salvage and reuse,'' he said. The menu had to reflect the restaurant's goal: presenting local ingredients in a rough-hewn complex that once cast the 36-inch-wide columns that support the dome of the United States Capitol. So he turned to Mary Mashburn, a designer with an office filled with old type just a few blocks away. Ms. Mashburn set the restaurant's name, Woodberry Kitchen, with scratched and nicked wooden type from her collection of antique block types and then printed a copy on her old letterpress. She then scanned the result into her computer, where she tweaked a few letters and adjusted some spacing. A new version of an old font was born. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]