Traditionalism versus the need to break away from tradition

➜ As with many other areas of design, the crafting of new typefaces was once subject to entrenched prejudices that regarded the traditional forms of Thai lettering as inviolable; any attempt to alter traditional letterforms would be considered sacrilegious, a debasement of Thai literary values. Such an attitude had prevailed until very recently.

For a designer with liberal leanings, attitudes of the traditionalist should not be dismissed outright. Instead, the contemporary designer should try to understand the concerns of the traditionalist while striving to work around them. So while the traditionalist is happily obeying rules, the liberal designer should attempt to push forward the boundaries of such a restrictive environment.

This notion is best explained through an analogy. Here we have the traditionalist operating within a fenced-up area while the liberal designer is outside. Any successful attempt by the liberal designer to pull the fence outwards will result in an increase of the area inside the perimeter of the fence. In other

words, whenever the liberal designer succeeds, the traditionalist also benefits for his area would be broadened in the process, thus creating more opportunities for his design world. And he stands to benefit without having to run the gauntlet of public criticisms and resistance. On the other hand, if he chooses to pull the fence inwards, then his own space will be reduced.

The scenario in the analogy above is fairly common in other spheres of interaction between conservatism and liberalism. In the area of graphic design, the restrictions imposed by conservatism may on occasions act as a straitjacket on design development. But so far very little has been done to directly address the issue. And most of the complaints we hear today are about the difficulties of finding the right fonts for the job at hand, or about the inadequacy of font varieties. Undeniably, these problems exist, and their persistence has been caused in part by excessive conservatism in Thai society.

Sticklers for traditions would often resort to citing history or isolated examples of old practices to buttress their arguments against any font designs they regard as departures from their ideal Thai forms. Such designs would be labeled as inferior to the traditional versions.

But while touting the virtue of conservation, the sticklers for traditions do not want to appear backward. This has led to the familiar claims of our being “modernized” and embracing internationalism. As a result, designs of the recent past are accepted as Thai heritage while those of the present are often relegated to the un-Thai genre.

In recent years, many typefaces of the seventies are being touted as classic designs, while the bulk of contemporary Thai fonts have received scant attention. The irony of this disparity is that all these fonts have been derived from the same family of letterforms. Such yearnings for things of the recent past underscore the need of the baby-boomers for symbols of their heyday. It is hardly surprising then that pundits have hailed Manoptica, a dry-transfer font of the seventies, as a classic example of Thai type design. In the same fashion, the digital font Kittithada, which is a makeover of Manoptica, has gained wide popularity over the ten years or so of its introduction. The question to ask here is: For a font to be accepted, must we wait twenty years for it to slowly mature into a ‘traditional’ design? Hopefully not – for if that was the case, we would have great difficulties in encouraging young designers to come up with new fonts today.

Although Thailand is a late starter in the area of type design, yet the evolution of Thai glyphs has progressed in leaps and bounds over the relatively short time span from the arrival of personal computing up to the present. The rapid transformation of Thai glyphs has raised queries from foreign observers regarding the improvement, or decline, in readability of the new glyphs, and the extent of possible public resistance to the changes on traditional forms. Compared to the evolution of Latin letterforms, changes in Thai glyphs have occurred more rapidly. It took nearly a century for Latin glyphs to adopt the sans-serif design (from introduction of the Akzidenz-Grotesk font in 1896 to release of Helvetica in 1957), while it took only three decades for a similar development in Thai typography.

It can be surmised from the above fact that, although there is still some resistance from the ultra-conservative traditionalists, the general public is quite ready to welcome changes in the Thai glyph forms. So the current climate bodes well for future development of Thai fonts.