Singapore-based company Grab launched its ride-hailing app in Cambodia and Myanmar in 2017. With its brand voice already established, using the Sanomat typeface from Commercial Type, we were tasked with extending the fonts to Khmer and Myanmar scripts.

The fonts would need to integrate seamlessly into the existing architecture of the app, working in the user interface as well as for branding all communications. We analysed the characteristics of Sanomat’s Latin and Thai (added by Bangkok foundry Cadson Demak), aiming to transpose the forms, feeling and function to the new scripts in a sensitive and aesthetic way. One key feature of the Khmer was the simplification of the upper stroke (the ‘sok’ or hair) to a horizontal bar, imbuing text with a contemporary feeling and ensuring pixel clarity at small sizes.

Grab Sanomat has now been revised and extended as Sanomat SEA, a retail font supporting Khmer, Latin, Myanmar, Thai and Vietnamese scripts, for other customers to license.