Sarabun Font
Gracing this and the strangeambience blog site is the Sarabun font designed by Suppakit Chalermlarp of the Thailand-based Cadson Demak graphic design studio.
Trying to find the best font for a site is not easy. Web safe fonts are dull, proprietary are too costly, so openfonts are the best route to go. I went through a lot of fonts on fontlibrary.org which does a great job of showing your how a font works in different scenarios such as size and backgrounds. I settled on Sarabun because it is attractive, clean, elegant and legible through all scenarios and the package comes with a full family of bold and italic variations. Sarabun also has a ‘classic’ look and seems to be at its best on lighter variants. Picking a font to represent you for personal branding requires confidence and am happy to pick Sarabun, even over proprietary fonts.
The story behind how Sarabun came to be is interesting. Sarabun was commissioned by the Thai government in a bid to save money on licensing fees paid to Microsoft every year for their fonts used on bureaucratic documentation. Once the font was designed, the Thai government had it released under an opensource license, which is both generous and fortuitous for the rest of us. Sarabun also happens to be the ‘national font’, which is pretty cool when you consider that not many countries have a ‘national font’.
If you are designing/developing a website, consider openfont library as a resource to examine and test fonts and please give Sarabun consideration.