01
Colour systems
Building reproducible colour standards from Lanna natural dyes, and the harmony rules that let those palettes interoperate with the colour systems designers already use.
About
Teerasak Sakon
ผู้ช่วยศาสตราจารย์ ดร.ธีรศักดิ์ สะกล
I am a designer and design researcher based in Lampang, in northern Thailand, and an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Thammasat University.
My practice runs along one axis: from a material or a craft that already exists in this region, to a system that someone else can operate. A dye becomes a colour standard. A drafting hand becomes a typeface. A community recipe becomes a package a local printer can reproduce five hundred times. A corridor becomes a wayfinding system whose performance can be measured.
I came to it from the production side — twenty years as a graphic designer, photographer and art director in Chiang Mai before the doctorate — which is why the deliverables here tend to be manuals, dielines and build systems rather than presentation images.
The research half exists for the same reason. Design decisions made in a studio disappear with the studio. Written up, tested and published, they become something a colleague in another province, or another country, can pick up and use.
01 — Focus
Where the work sits
02
Type design
Thai and Latin typefaces drawn from technical and vernacular lettering, engineered so that the build — not the hand-patched file — is the source of truth.
03
Identity systems
Institutional and place identities delivered as operable systems: manuals, motion, and rules that survive being applied by people who did not design them.
04
Packaging for community enterprise
Production-ready packaging for small producers working with local printers, short runs and no in-house design capacity.
05
Environmental graphics
Wayfinding designed against behavioural indicators, then evaluated post-occupancy against those same indicators.
06
Design education
FC-STEAM and design-for-learning models, and a Thai-language textbook that makes this practice teachable.
02 — Appointments
Positions
Assistant Professor, Commercial Art Design (Visual Communication Design)
Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Thammasat University, Lampang
Lecturer, Industrial Crafts Design
Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Thammasat University, Lampang
Expert Lecturer, Industrial Crafts Design
Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Thammasat University, Lampang
Special Lecturer
Faculty of Communication Arts, Kasem Bundit University, Bangkok
Photographer · Art Director · Training Supervisor
Art and Technology (Thailand) Co., Ltd., Chiang Mai
Graphic Designer
Trisila Chiang Mai (Citylife Magazine)
Graphic Designer
Sam Noh Co., Ltd., Bangkok
03 — Education
Degrees
Doctor of Industrial Education (D.I.Ed.)
Faculty of Industrial Education and Technology, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang
Master of Education, Educational Technology
Faculty of Education, Chiang Mai University
Bachelor of Industrial Education (Educational Technology), Second-class Honours
King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi
High Vocational Certificate, Communication Arts and Design
Rajamangala University of Technology Lanna, Chiang Mai
04 — Recognition
Awards
Visual Arts Silver Medal
The 6th International Symposium on Creative Fine Arts (TSU-ISCFA)
Creative Design Award (CDA) — New Media Design
Creative Chiang Mai
Working on colour, type,
or design education?
I collaborate on research projects, creative works for international exhibition, and curriculum development. The fastest route is email.