14 Facts About Thai typefaces

The printing of textbooks for a new education system and newspapers and magazines for a burgeoning press in the early twentieth century spurred innovation in typography and type design, and various styles of Thai typefaces were developed through the ages as metal type gave way to newer technologies.

One of the main distinguishing features among Thai typefaces is the head of characters, referred to as the terminal loop.

Classification systems of Thai typefaces—primarily based on the terminal loop—have been proposed, as has terminology for type anatomy, though they remain under development as the field continues to progress.

Records mentioning printing first appear during the reign of King Narai of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, though the first documented printing of the Thai typefaces language did not occur until 1788, in the early Rattanakosin period, when the French Catholic missionary Arnaud-Antoine Garnault had a catechism and a primer printed in Pondicherry in French India.

The texts, printed in romanized Thai typefaces, were distributed in Siam, and Garnault later set up a printing press in Bangkok.

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Thai typefaces had learned the language from settled Thai war captives who had been relocated following the fall of Ayutthaya in 1767.

Thai typefaces-script printing reached Siam when the American missionary doctor Dan Beach Bradley arrived in Bangkok in 1835, bringing with him from the Singapore printing operation an old printing press, together with a set of Thai typefaces type.

Thai typefaces's press gained the attention of elite Thais, especially Prince Mongkut, who set up his own printing press at Wat Bowonniwet, cast his own Thai type, and created a new script, known as Ariyaka, to print the Pali language used for Buddhist texts.

The press's preferred typeface, Farang Ses, designed in 1913, was the first to employ thick and thin strokes reflecting old-style serif Latin Thai typefaces, and became extremely popular, with its derivatives widely used into the digital age.

The best known of these Thai typefaces, Manoptica, was designed to invoke the characteristics of the sans-serif typeface Helvetica, and was released in 1973.

On-screen interactive display of Thai typefaces text became available in the 1980s, and DOS-based word processors such as CU Writer, released in 1989, saw widespread adoption.

Display category includes Thai typefaces derived from styles of originally hand-drawn display lettering, which were purpose-made for uses including signage, book covers, and labels.

Thai typefaces is written without spaces between words, and word splitting is required to determine the proper placement of line breaks.

Only a few common Thai typefaces are known from the days of cast metal type, including Bradley, Thong Siam, Witthayachan, Farang Ses, and the "Pong" display types.