Thai font · OFL

Kodchasan

คชสาร · TH Kodchasan

By Narongsak Chaiwong

Typography & Licensing Specialist, ThaiGraph · June 13, 2026 · Updated August 5, 2026

Information verified as of August 2026

อ่านหน้า ฟอนต์ Kodchasan เป็นภาษาไทย — พร้อมลิงก์ดาวน์โหลดและวิธีติดตั้ง →

<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Kodchasan:wght@400;700&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

@import url('https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Kodchasan:wght@400;700&display=swap');

font-family: 'Kodchasan', cursive;

What Kodchasan is, and how it relates to TH Kodchasan

Kodchasan (คชสาร) is a casual looped Thai family modelled on teenage handwriting, designed by Kansuda Peamprajakpong and distributed free on Google Fonts since 22 August 2018 in six weights with matching italics — twelve styles — under the SIL Open Font License. It is the same design as TH Kodchasan from Thailand’s 13 National Fonts; only the distribution build differs.

In 2007, Thailand’s Software Industry Promotion Agency (SIPA) released 13 free fonts for public and government use — the project that also produced TH Sarabun PSK, ancestor of today’s Sarabun. TH Kodchasan was the casual one in that batch. Cadson Demak later prepared the family for Google Fonts and widened the weight range to six.

Practically: if a government document template names the font “TH Kodchasan”, use the SIPA build, because the internal family name differs from the Google Fonts release. For new work, use the Google Fonts build — more weights, and it is the maintained version.

The project description sets the tone honestly: the face “gives a flavor of cuteness but yet not too fun or being funny”. It is handwriting that has been to school — controlled, legible, a little soft.

What does คชสาร mean?

คชสาร (khot-cha-san) is a Thai noun meaning elephant. It is a literary word formed from คช, meaning elephant, plus สาร. It is not a coined font name; the word existed long before the typeface.

It belongs to the set of poetic Thai synonyms for elephant, alongside words like กุญชร and ไอยรา. Choosing a literary Thai word rather than a transliteration follows the naming pattern across the National Fonts set.

Is Kodchasan free for commercial use?

Yes, fully. Kodchasan is released under the SIL Open Font License, which permits commercial work, web embedding, app embedding, modification, and bundling into products — no payment, and no need to contact the designer. The official Google Fonts listing confirms the OFL.

A warning, because this matters: several international font-aggregator sites publish incorrect information about Kodchasan, listing it as “free for personal use” and instructing users to contact the author for commercial licensing. Some also credit the wrong designer entirely. That is wrong. Kodchasan has lived in the Google Fonts OFL collection (the ofl/kodchasan directory) since 2018, and the GitHub project ships an OFL file.

The OFL’s only real conditions are that the licence notice travels with the font files when the files are redistributed, and that the font files are not sold on their own. Selling work made with the font — packaging, textbooks, apps, templates — is entirely permitted. If you modify and redistribute the files, rename the font and keep it under the OFL. Compare the terms against commercial Thai foundries in the Thai font licensing guide.

All weights — Kodchasan Bold and SemiBold

Kodchasan ships six weights, each with a true italic, for twelve styles, and all of them come in the same download. There is no separate Bold or SemiBold file to track down:

Twelve styles is a generous range for a handwriting-flavoured face, and the italics give editorial designers an emphasis style inside the family rather than forcing a second font.

There is no variable-font build. The Google Fonts directory holds 12 static TTFs of roughly 99–107 KB each, so every weight loads as its own file.

How to download and install Kodchasan

Kodchasan is a free download from Google Fonts: one family ZIP containing all six weights and six italics. No registration, no payment. Three routes:

1. Google Fonts ZIP — open the Kodchasan specimen, click “Get font”, and download the family ZIP.
2. CSS embed — load https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Kodchasan:ital,wght@0,400;0,700;1,400&display=swap in a <link> tag (add weight pairs as needed), then set font-family: 'Kodchasan', sans-serif;.
3. GitHub source — the cadsondemak/Kodchasan repository carries the project files under OFL-1.1.

Use those two sources only. Third-party aggregators often serve older builds and, as noted above, misstate the licence.

Windows and macOS install steps are in the download panel at the top of this page. To try it with your own text first, use the Thai font tester.

Character design and tone

Kodchasan keeps the full looped structure of formal Thai writing but rounds and relaxes it, the way a teenager’s neat notebook hand rounds a textbook model. Looped heads on ม, ภ, and บ stay closed and circular; strokes are monolinear and gently bouncy rather than ruler-straight.

The Cadson Demak repository describes “a little flare of feminist handwriting” that makes the face “more gentle and soft spoken”, and that reads accurately on the page: terminals curl slightly, counters are generous, and nothing is sharp.

Compared with Itim, Kodchasan is more disciplined — closer to careful homework than to a marker doodle. Compared with Sriracha, it is less stylised and easier to read in running text. And unlike Charmonman, it is not a calligraphic face, which is why it can genuinely carry body copy.

The Latin matches the rounded, hand-drawn register, so bilingual children’s material keeps one voice across scripts.

Best use cases

Kodchasan fits content aimed at children and teenagers, and any brand that wants approachable Thai without losing legibility. Strong briefs:

• School materials, workbooks, and educational apps for Thai students
• Snack, dessert, and bubble-tea packaging in a cute-but-tidy register
• Youth campaigns, summer camps, and after-school programmes
• Comics lettering and casual social graphics where Itim feels too loose
• Informal announcements that still have to be read easily — activity boards, community flyers

Where it fails: corporate identity, legal or government documents (TH Sarabun PSK is the mandated choice), and luxury anything. The handwriting flavour caps the formality ceiling. Long body text past a few paragraphs also tires; the bounce that charms in a headline accumulates on a full page.

Pairings

Kodchasan works best as the personality layer over a plain text family. Three combinations:

• Sarabun — its SIPA sibling as the neutral body under Kodchasan headings
• Noto Sans Thai — the safe body choice for apps and e-learning interfaces
• Kodchasan with itself — Bold headings, Regular body, Italic captions; few free Thai families can run a whole children’s book alone, and this one can

For other free Thai handwriting faces worth comparing, see Charm and the full handwritten Thai font category.

Name variants and spellings

All of these refer to the same font:

• Kodchasan — the Google Fonts name
• TH Kodchasan — the National Fonts name, used in government document templates
• คชสาร — the Thai name, meaning elephant
• TH Kodchasal / Kodchasarn / Kotchasan — frequent misspellings; all mean this font
• Kodchasan Bold / SemiBold — weights within the family, both included in the same download

Licensing

Kodchasan is released under the SIL Open Font License: free for commercial use, modification, and embedding, with the OFL notice kept alongside the files. That covers packaging runs, apps, and printed schoolbooks alike. Verify at the Google Fonts specimen or the GitHub repository.

The 2007 SIPA originals remain separately downloadable and are likewise free, but the Google Fonts build is the maintained version with the fuller weight range. Browse every licence-verified free Thai family in the free Thai fonts category.

Information verified as of August 2026