Alisara Tareekes

alisaradesign.com
@alisaradesign

Alisara Tareekes was born and grew up in Bangkok, Thailand. She fell in love with calligraphy at the age of 13 but couldn’t find a place to study at that point. She has been interested in art and design ever since and chose to study Industrial Design from the School of Architecture, Chulalongkorn University. As a student, she was selected to participate in Nokia Mobile Design with Feminine Inspiration English-speaking forum and was 1 of 3 winners in Royal Porcelain ceramics design competition. She designed signages for new buildings and libraries at the university from her junior year until after graduation.

In 2008, she went to study in the United States where she rediscovered her passion in a calligraphy class at University of California, Los Angeles Extension with Carrie Imai, a president of Society for Calligraphy, Southern California. With Carrie’s encouragement, she entered and won two scholarships to attend International Calligraphy Conferences in Portland, Oregon and Easton, Massachusetts, both of which kick-started her career in calligraphy and lettering design. Wanted to learn from the best in the industry, she designed her own curriculum by attending workshops, tutorial sessions, and masterclasses with renowned calligraphers and type designers such as Sheila & Julian Waters, Georgia Deaver, Pat Blair, Massimo Polello, and Jovica Veljović. Her story was published on UCLA Extension’s N-Vis-N newsletter. She later collaborated with her first calligraphy mentor, Carrie Imai, by producing instructional videos and designing layout for Carrie’s book “Dancin’ Pen” in 2012.

In her free time, she volunteered as a graphic designer for AIGA Los Angeles and the Society for Calligraphy, Southern California. She took her volunteer and personal work seriously; they were featured in “Alphabet Journal”, “Bound and Lettered”, and “Mastering Calligraphy: The Complete Guide to Hand Lettering”. She enjoys sharing her knowledge and has previously taught calligraphy workshops at UCLA Extension, University of Southern California (Artisanal Life Program), Letters California Style Conference, and Typographic Association of Bangkok (TAB).

Alisara is currently an environmental graphic designer at Walt Disney Imagineering in Glendale, California.