Pattaya

The Thai foundry Cadson Demak, who led this project, are frank about a weakness in it. In Pattaya the letters ก, ถ, ภ, ฤ and ฦ come out close to each other, so do บ and ป, ข and ช, ฎ and ฏ, and in a very short text (a 2 word sign, a label) a reader can mistake 1 for the other. Keep that in mind before it goes on a shopfront.

The Latin side is Lobster, Pablo Impallari’s fat connected script and 1 of the most used web fonts there is. What Cadson Demak did, with the Thai drawn by Thanarat Vachiruckul and Suppakit Chalermlarp, was carry that into Thai in the informal loopless manner, which leaves out the loops and simplifies the details. Simplify carelessly and each letter loses its character, so the team paid close attention to the thick and thin strokes and to the size and position of the vowel and tone marks, which sit above and below the line and decide how readable a Thai word is.

Those marks are also why this is a separate family. Lobster’s line spacing had no room for them, so the vertical metrics were changed and the result got its own name.

There is 1 Regular style with Cyrillic and Vietnamese next to the Thai and Latin. Keep it to headlines and short bits of text, bigger the better.