Thai font · OFL

KoHo

By Narongsak Chaiwong

Typography & Licensing Specialist, ThaiGraph · June 13, 2026

Information verified as of June 2026

What KoHo is

KoHo is a looped Thai and Latin sans drawn by a three-person studio of the same name in Khon Kaen — Kham Chaturongkhakun, Kanokwan Phaenthaisong, and Khanittha Sitthiyaem — and distributed through Cadson Demak on Google Fonts since August 2018. Six weights from ExtraLight (200) to Bold (700), each with a true italic, all under the SIL Open Font License.

Two official descriptions exist, and they disagree in a useful way. The Google Fonts specimen calls KoHo a family “inspired by geometric and humanist san serifs” that appears “neither too mechanical or too calligraphic” and works for both text and display. The project README is blunter: a display face with “a charm of vernacular and carefree handmade typeface,” a deliberate nod to what it calls the “unfashionable countryside and folk way of life” of rural, agricultural Thailand. Both are accurate. The skeleton is a tidy modern sans. The detailing is country.

Character design and tone

KoHo’s signature decision is inconsistency on purpose: organic forms were “randomly applied to the head loop through out the whole set,” per the project README, so the loops (หัว) on ม, ถ, and ภ do not quite match each other. Most looped Thai fonts treat the head as a precision element. KoHo treats it like a potter’s thumbprint.

At poster sizes the unevenness reads as handmade warmth. At 14px it flattens into ordinary texture, which is the practical reason Google Fonts can honestly position the family for text use as well as display. The strokes stay close to monolinear and the structure stays geometric, so paragraphs hold together even while individual heads wobble.

Latin, Latin Extended, and Vietnamese ship alongside the Thai set, which matters for menus and packaging that mix scripts on one surface.

Weights and availability

KoHo ships twelve static styles on Google Fonts: six weights from ExtraLight (200) to Bold (700), each with a matching italic. No variable-font version is listed. True italics across every weight remain unusual among free looped Thai families; KoHo commits to them throughout.

Regular and SemiBold cover most signage and menu work. ExtraLight is fragile below display sizes — the thin loops lose their character first.

How to download KoHo

KoHo is a free download from Google Fonts — the family ZIP contains all twelve static TTFs, no registration required. Three routes:

1. Google Fonts ZIP — open the KoHo specimen, click “Get font”, and download the family ZIP.
2. CSS embed — load https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=KoHo:ital,wght@0,400;0,600;1,400&display=swap in a <link> tag, then set font-family: 'KoHo', sans-serif;.
3. GitHub source — the cadsondemak/Koho repository holds the project files for self-hosting.

Best use cases

KoHo fits friendly, local, food-adjacent briefs — the kind of work where a polished corporate sans would feel like a costume. Strong briefs:

• Café, street-food, and market branding: menus, stall signage, delivery packaging
• Community festival posters and local event material
• Packaging for agricultural products and small-batch goods
• Editorial features on rural Thailand and Thai food writing

Where it does not fit: corporate identity systems, fintech UI, and long technical documents. The loop inconsistency that gives KoHo its charm becomes noise in a data table. For quiet body text under KoHo headers, Sarabun does the unglamorous work.

Pairings

KoHo pairs best with quieter Thai faces that let its uneven loops stay the point.

• Sarabun — the loopless workhorse for body text under KoHo display; see Sarabun
• Prompt — geometric loopless sans when subheads need a cleaner modern counterweight; see Prompt

For looped alternatives with steadier heads, compare Krub and Niramit. The Thai typography guide covers pairing logic; the fonts directory has the full catalogue.

Licensing

KoHo is released under the SIL Open Font License: free for commercial use, modification, web embedding, and bundling, provided the OFL notice travels with the files. Copyright sits with The KoHo Project Authors. Verify at the Google Fonts specimen or the GitHub repository. A restaurant can put KoHo on every menu, sign, and delivery box without paying anyone.

Information verified as of June 2026