Thai font · FREE

iannnnnUBC

By Narongsak Chaiwong

Typography & Licensing Specialist, ThaiGraph · August 29, 2026

Information verified as of August 2026

อ่านหน้า ฟอนต์ iannnnnUBC เป็นภาษาไทย — พร้อมลิงก์ดาวน์โหลดและวิธีติดตั้ง →

What iannnnnUBC is

iannnnnUBC is a free-for-commercial-use loopless Thai handwriting typeface listed on f0nt.com on 12 January 2005, and it is the first font Prachya Singhto ever made — the one he taught himself in order to caption images in his university thesis, and the one that, by his own account, ended with him building f0nt.com. One weight, complete Thai and Latin coverage, 303,088 downloads when we read the counter on 29 August 2026.

By downloads it is the ninth of seventeen in the iannnnn 2005 series. By significance it is first, because every other font in that run — and arguably the site those fonts are hosted on — descends from it. f0nt.com’s own tags for it are UBC, ลายมือ (handwriting) and ไม่มีหัว (loopless).

That third tag is the one to hold onto. Almost every write-up of this series files it as looped Thai handwriting. It is not. The file confirms the tag, and the section below shows exactly where the heads went.

The thesis font that became f0nt.com

The origin is not a legend retold by fans — the designer states the whole causal chain in the first sentence of the release page, and it is short enough to quote in full.

ฟอนต์ตัวแรกในชีวิตของผม หัดทำตอนจะส่งวิทยานิพนธ์เพียงเพราะอยากได้ฟอนต์ที่เป็นลายมือตัวเองไว้บรรยายภาพส่งอาจารย์ โดยไม่มีความรู้เรื่องการทำฟอนต์เลย พอเสร็จแล้วสนุกดี ก็เลยแรงบันดาลใจที่จะทำฟอนต์อีกเยอะๆ จนเกิดเป็นเว็บฟอนต์.ไอ้แอนนนนน และ ฟอนต์.คอมในที่สุด!

“The first font of my life. I taught myself to make it when I was about to submit my thesis, purely because I wanted a font of my own handwriting to caption images for my professor, with no knowledge of font-making at all. When it was done it was fun, so I was inspired to make many more fonts — until that became the fonts.iannnnn site and finally f0nt.com!”

The dates behind that sentence line up. f0nt.com’s About page logs the site starting at fonts.iannnnn.com in 2003 as plain HTML, then the domain being registered and the site formally launched on 19 ธันวาคม 2004. UBC was listed twenty-four days later. Two decades on, the About page is still signed @iannnnn — ผู้ดูแลเว็บไซต์, the site administrator.

The ordering inside the series is corroborated from a second post rather than from file dates. iannnnnHBO, listed a week later on 19 January 2005, closes with (ฟอนต์ตัวที่สองในชีวิตครับ) — the second font of his life. So UBC first, HBO second, in the designer’s own numbering. For where independent publishing like this sits against the commercial Thai foundries, see Thai type foundries.

The file you download is not the 2004 original, and not the January 2005 one either

iannnnnUBC has been rebuilt at least twice, and the designer documents both steps. The page carries this note: ฟอนต์ iannnnnUBC ตัวนี้เป็นเวอร์ชันปรับปรุงจาก 2004_iannnnnUBC ที่ทำมาก่อนหน้า และถูกแก้ไขขัดเกลาเป็นเวอร์ชัน 2005 ในปัจจุบัน — this iannnnnUBC is an improved version of the earlier 2004_iannnnnUBC, refined into the 2005 version served now.

The binary adds a third step he does not mention here. head.created inside the shipped 2005_iannnnnUBC.ttf reads 4 November 2005, ten months after the January listing date, with head.modified one minute later. That places it at the very end of the rebuild window the designer announced elsewhere for the whole 2005 run; the iannnnn hub sets out that chronology and his announcement in full. The first font he ever made was among the last he went back and fixed.

There is no live release page on f0nt.com for 2004_iannnnnUBC. It is referenced by its successor and not published, so treat it as a lost draft rather than a downloadable variant.

One more artefact of the site’s own history sits on this page. Where the interactive specimen used to be, the raw text of an unrendered WordPress shortcode is printed on the page, pointing at iannnnnUBC.swf uploaded in June 2009 — a dead Flash embed left behind by the migration to WordPress that the About page logs for July 2009. The static PNG specimen above it, still served from the 2005/01 upload folder, is the one that works.

What the letterforms actually do — and why this face is loopless

Rendered at 640 px, iannnnnUBC has no หัว to speak of: on ก and ถ the head is gone entirely and the stroke simply turns a corner, while on ด, บ and ผ it survives as a small open hook that never closes into a circle. That is what f0nt.com’s ไม่มีหัว tag records, and it is a genuine finding about this font rather than a style label applied by eye.

The construction is a light, fast, unhurried hand with a nearly constant hairline stroke and a slight forward lean. Measured at 2048 units per em:

That ข at 487 units next to ณ at 1068 is the whole personality in one row. A fitted text face keeps those in a narrow band; a hand does not, and UBC does not. The rhythm is visibly uneven along a line, which is exactly what makes it read as writing rather than as type.

The ascenders are the second signature. ป, ส, ศ, ฝ and ฟ all push past 1077 units against a consonant body of roughly 800, so tall letters spike well clear of the line while the body stays small and light. Combined with descenders reaching −432 on ฤ, the face needs generous leading or the lines will tangle.

The Latin is separately drawn and larger-feeling than the Thai — cap height 919 against a Thai body of about 800 — so mixed setting reads Latin-forward unless you size the two independently.

How iannnnnUBC handles Thai script

Thai coverage is complete: all 87 assigned codepoints in U+0E01 to U+0E5B are in the cmap with no gaps, Thai digits ๐ to ๙ included, and mark placement comes entirely from fixed glyph geometry, because the font declares no Thai OpenType script at all.

The tone marks begin at y 1089 (mai tri), 1100 (mai chattawa), 1117 (mai tho) and 1118 (mai ek). Those sit lower than in most of the series, and lower than the tops of ป at 1139 and ส at 1137 — so on a tall consonant the mark does not clear the ascender vertically at all. It avoids it by horizontal offset alone: the marks are drawn to the right of the stem, and the tall strokes of ป and ฝ rise on the left. Set ป่, ฟ้ and ส้ and they resolve cleanly. It is a tighter, more handwritten result than the high fixed band used elsewhere in the series — and it is tighter because it has less margin, not because it is smarter.

Over a plain consonant the same fixed height leaves a visible gap. ก่ and น่ float their marks roughly 270 to 300 units above the letter, about 14% of the em. Where an upper vowel occupies the space, as in ที่ or ปี่, the stack reads correctly.

Below-line vowels reach further than the rest of the face does. Measured on the vertical axis, สระอุ spans −461 to −110 and สระอู −379 to −92. สระอู stays inside the descender depth the tails already require, but สระอุ at −461 drops slightly below the font’s deepest tail, ฤ at −432 — so a line with ดุ or คุ in it sets the lowest ink on the page. Give the line a little more leading than the tails alone would suggest.

What is inside the file

iannnnnUBC is the thinner build of the two 2005 fonts on this site: it has GDEF and GSUB but no GPOS and no legacy kern table, so it ships with no kerning of any kind — not even for the Latin. Its sibling iannnnnGMO has both. Set UBC in Latin at display size and you will see the gaps.

The rest, read with fontTools:

• unitsPerEm 2048; 238 glyphs; fsType 8, Editable embedding, so embedding in documents and conversion to webfonts are permitted at the binary level.
• GSUB registers latn only, with liga. No thai script, no Thai mark-positioning features, no alternate tone-mark forms for tall consonants. That is the 2005 state of the art for this family of files, and it is an honest caveat for modern webfont use.
• nameID 10 credits the shared community template the whole series was built on: This font used : NP NaipolTemplate : Version 2.000.
• nameID 3, the unique font identifier, reads iannnnn: 2005_iannnnnGMO: 2005. It names GMO. This is a copy-paste left in the file: every other name record in it correctly says 2005_iannnnnUBC, including the trademark string. It is harmless in practice — the family and full names are what applications key on — but it is a real defect in a file that has been downloaded 303,088 times, and it is the kind of detail you can only get by opening the font.
• Five glyphs are drawn but unmapped: lochula.short, lulakkhangyao, rulakkhangyao, saraamleft and yamakkanleftthai.

If you are building your own Thai face, the modern route through this same problem is in how to make a Thai font.

Is iannnnnUBC free for commercial use?

Yes. The release page carries f0nt.com’s ใช้งานเชิงพาณิชย์ได้ฟรี badge — free for commercial use — twice, linking to a category the site defines as ฟอนต์ที่ผู้สร้างสรรค์อนุญาตให้นำไปใช้ทำมาหากินได้, fonts their creators permit to be used to earn a living. The contradicting string inside the file is inherited template metadata.

The site licence, published 28 กรกฎาคม 2552 (28 July 2009), contains the precedence rule that settles it: you may download and use the fonts free of charge, but if any other agreement is stated by the font’s owner — as shown on the font’s download page, or as a document file attached to the font — that agreement governs. Here the download page states the grant, and the archive contains one .ttf and no licence document at all. So nothing displaces the grant. The name-table string For educations used only. travels with the NP Naipol template credited two records above it, not with the author, whose bio on the same page reads ฟอนต์จาก iannnnn แจกฟรีตลอดไป เอาไปใช้ทำมาหากินได้เลยครับ — free forever, go and use them to make a living.

Three restrictions are real, and stricter than the SIL Open Font License that covers most free Thai fonts:

1. You may not sell the font file. Bundling it with a deliverable so the file renders is fine; selling the font as the product is not.
2. You may not re-host it. The FAQ answers that question with ไม่ได้จ้ะ. Descriptions and specimen images may be republished with attribution and a link back to the download page.
3. Modifying to redistribute needs permission. Private modification is fine; modifying to sell or hand on requires the owner’s consent.

This is our reading of published terms, not legal advice; for a high-value use, ask through the f0nt.com forum. The Thai font licensing guide sets the whole framework out.

Where to download iannnnnUBC

The only authorised source is the iannnnnUBC release page on f0nt.com, where clicking the download button is what accepts the licence — the page states it plainly: ข้อตกลง: คลิกดาวน์โหลด = ยอมรับสัญญาอนุญาต.

The archive is 2005_iannnnnUBC.zip and contains exactly one file, 2005_iannnnnUBC.ttf. No OTF, no webfont build, no second weight, and no licence file — which is normal for this series and is itself part of the licensing picture above.

Two practical notes. Save the file from the release page rather than hot-linking the archive — not because the endpoint stops you (we checked on 29 August 2026: it serves the zip to a bare request with no Referer and no browser User-Agent) but because the f0nt.com licence forbids re-hosting the files, and the redirect target is an undocumented path that can move without notice. And because there is no Thai OpenType shaping in the file, check the mark placement in the application you actually intend to use before committing to it — the Thai font tester will show you your own text.

Where iannnnnUBC sits among the iannnnn fonts

UBC is the origin point, and the designer’s later work makes the distance obvious. Three useful comparisons on this site:

• iannnnnGMO, listed a week later, is the opposite experiment: a looped, even, geometric attempt at a standard text face rather than a record of a hand. Same designer, same month, same template, entirely different intent.
• iannnnn-DOG, from the later animal series, is what twenty years of practice does to the same instinct — a tidy hand with proper weights and modern shaping.
• iannnnn-OWL shows the same designer working for atmosphere rather than legibility, and is the clearest evidence that the animal series is a deliberate body of work rather than a set of one-offs.

For faces built like UBC rather than by the same person, browse loopless Thai fonts and handwritten Thai fonts.

What to use iannnnnUBC for, and where it fails

Use it where the point is that someone wrote this — short, light, personal lines at display size. It suits:

• Image captions and annotations, which is literally what it was drawn for
• Notes, quotes and pull-outs inside an otherwise typeset layout
• Zines, exhibition labels, and small-run print with a handmade register
• Titles for personal, craft and student work

Where it fails: body text at small sizes, anything needing a bold, and any interface. The stroke is a hairline, there is no second weight, and there is no kerning to lean on. Set the running text in Sarabun or Anuphan and give UBC only the handwritten part. Give it more leading than you think it needs — those −432 unit descenders are not decorative.

Name variants and spellings

These all point at the same 2005 typeface:

• iannnnnUBC — the name on the release page and in the file’s family name
• 2005_iannnnnUBC — the family name inside the .ttf and the archive name
• 2004_iannnnnUBC — the earlier version the designer says this one improves on; not published, not downloadable
• iannnnn UBC, ianUBC — spacing and n-count variants; the handle has exactly five n’s
• ฟอนต์ iannnnnUBC — the standard Thai query
• ฟอนต์ไอ้แอนนนนน — the designer’s handle written in Thai
• ฟอนต์ 2005 — the query for the whole series, which resolves at the iannnnn hub

There is no published explanation for what the three letters UBC stand for. The designer explains the naming of a few fonts in this series and not this one; we are not going to invent one.

Information verified as of August 2026