IBM Plex is an open source typeface

superfamily SUPERFAMILY is a database and search platform of structural and functional annotation for all proteins and genomes. It classifies amino acid sequences into known structural domains, especially into SCOP superfamilies. Domains are functional, str ...

conceptually designed and developed by Mike Abbink at IBM in collaboration with Bold Monday to reflect the design principles of IBM and to be used for all brand material across the company internationally. Plex replaces Helvetica as the IBM corporate typeface after more than fifty years, freeing the company from extensive license payments in the process. Version 1.0 of the font family had four typefaces, each with 8 weights (Thin, Extra Light, Light, Regular, Text, Medium, Semi-bold, Bold) and true italics to complement them. * IBM Plex Sans – A grotesque

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...

typeface with a design that was inspired by Franklin Gothic. Other sans-serif classifications were rejected on the basis of being too soft ( humanist), inefficient (

geometric Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is ca ...

) and overly perfected ( Neo-grotesque). Some of Franklin Gothic's features such as the angled terminals, a

double-storey g G, or g, is the seventh Letter (alphabet), letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is English alphabet#Le ...

and a horizontal line at the baseline of the 1 are used in IBM Plex Sans. On 7 April 2019, IBM Plex Sans Variable, a variable counterpart to IBM Plex Sans was released. * IBM Plex Sans Condensed – A condensed variant of IBM Plex Sans. * IBM Plex Mono – A monospaced typeface based on IBM Plex Sans. The italic design was inspired by the Italic 12 typeface used on the IBM Selectric typewriter; this is particularly evident with the italicised ''i'', ''j'', ''t'' and ''x'' letters. * IBM Plex Serif – A transitional

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...

typeface with a design that was inspired by Bodoni and Janson. Other serif classifications were rejected for being too humanist and outdated (old-style) and too clunky and unrefined for long text ( slab-serif). Some of Bodoni's features such as ball terminals and rectangular serifs are used in IBM Plex Serif.

Unicode coverage

As of version 1.0 the IBM Plex typefaces support over 100 languages with most that use the Latin alphabet (including Vietnamese), as well as

Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...

(except in IBM Plex Sans Condensed). In version 3.0 of IBM Plex Sans, support for

monotonic Greek Greek orthography has used a variety of diacritics starting in the Hellenistic period. The more complex polytonic orthography ( el, πολυτονικό σύστημα γραφής, translit=polytonikó sýstīma grafī́s), which includes fiv ...

was added. For other writing systems separate fonts were made without italics: * IBM Plex Sans Hebrew – Adding support for the Hebrew writing system. * IBM Plex Sans Thai – Adding support for the informal loopless

Thai Thai or THAI may refer to: * Of or from Thailand, a country in Southeast Asia ** Thai people, the dominant ethnic group of Thailand ** Thai language, a Tai-Kadai language spoken mainly in and around Thailand *** Thai script *** Thai (Unicode block ...

script, released on 15 October 2018. * IBM Plex Sans Thai Looped – Adding support for the formal looped Thai script, on 5 April 2019. * IBM Plex Sans Devanagari – Added support for the Devanagari writing system, released on 14 December 2018. * IBM Plex Sans Arabic – Added support for Arabic script, released on 13 March 2019. * IBM Plex Sans Korean – Added support for the Hangul alphabet, released on 8 June 2020. *IBM Plex Sans Japanese – Added support for Japanese writing system, released on 24 July 2021. In addition, both Mike Abbink and Bold Monday have confirmed to be working on support for CJK, Bengali, Tamil and Kannada. There is also support for common mathematical and currency symbols (including

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(₿) #U+20BF which was ratified into Unicode in 2017) as well as

ligatures Ligature may refer to: * Ligature (medicine), a piece of suture used to shut off a blood vessel or other anatomical structure ** Ligature (orthodontic), used in dentistry * Ligature (music), an element of musical notation used especially in the me ...

such as fi and fl, along with

stylistic alternates In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design. In mode ...

for a, g and 0. There are a few unreleased symbols for IBM Plex Sans Condensed, IBM Plex Mono and IBM Plex Serif such as the generic currency sign (¤), prime symbol (′) and double prime symbol (″). In addition Mike Abbink has confirmed support for the Mathematical Operators block and support for the symbols used in the APL programming language in 2019. The FCC #EFCC and CE marking #ECE0 logos are encoded as glyphs within the Private Use Area. Prior to version 1.0, five IBM logos (solid and 8-bar logos, and the I-Bee-M logo) #EBE1 to #EBE7 were also encoded as glyphs.

Licensing

IBM has licensed the font files only under the SIL Open Font License (SIL OFL). Between 9 August 2018 and 21 August 2018, the fonts were also

dual-licensed Multi-licensing is the practice of distributing software under two or more different sets of terms and conditions. This may mean multiple different software licenses or sets of licenses. Prefixes may be used to indicate the number of licenses ...

under the Apache License. This dual-licensing arrangement was rescinded due to concerns that the Apache License is unsuitable for fonts. The SIL OFL license is

free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procur ...

and

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

, but building the fonts from source requires FontLab Studio, which is proprietary software. Bold Monday also provide web development code in

CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...

, SCSS and JavaScript that is related to the fonts under the Apache License. IBM Plex's name is reserved, as allowed by the SIL OFL, and trademarked as of December 2017.

Unicode coverage

Licensing

See also

References

External links