With our new corporate typeface, IBM Plex, comes a new set of guidance and best practices. IBM typography is international and modern to reflect our brand and our design principles.

Warning: IBM Type is still in development and being carefully implemented in real cases where we can look for any difficulties. Look out for a stable v1.0.0 release by October 16th.

Check that any webpage follows the IBM Type with our Chrome and Firefox extension. This extremely helpful to developers as they code and designers as they review work.

We want to show off many examples of what IBM Type is capable of. Check out the examples below and learn at the bottom of this document how to provide a new example:

• Dev Tutorial (Source)

Use these artboards in your Sketch files to accomplish a design at each breakpoint your developer will be working with. Right click and select Save link as to save this Sketch file.

We consider both performance and craftmanship of typography. When we think of type ratio, we keep in mind what works for IBM Plex and effectively deliver and organize the content for our viewers. Based on the type ratio, we have a basic set of styles: 14, 16, 26, 44, and 56. Based on the type scales, IBM Plex Sans Light works well in large scale type sizes and IBM Plex Sans Regular works well for relevant small type size.

IBM Plex Sans Light, IBM Plex Sans Regular, IBM Plex Sans SemiBold will be the primary weights for digital environment. ExtraLight and Thin are not for digital environments.

We recommend always using flush left text, no centered, no flush right.

IBM Plex has been designed to not be spaced tightly. It requires space to breath comfortably within text and headlines. It's lighter in appearance and is more legible when spaced appropriately. We recommend a default tracking of 0. No tracking for most of the cases.

Exception:

• Display A/B: Adobe: -5 to -10 Sketch:-0.1
• Caption style: Adobe: +5 to +10 Sketch: +.1

For better reading experience, we set up max-widths for text length based on the column width, type scales and the right amount of characters.

The IBM Type code provides the following benefits:

• Rendering and kerning that best reflects IBM Plex
• Specific styles that set size, line height, and weights for both editorial and product experiences
• When used with IBM Grid, automatic line lengths based on which type style and which grid container

To install, run npm install @ibm/type

If you want to use the compiled css, reference the file in the dist folder:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="node_modules/@ibm/type/dist/css/ibm-type.min.css">

If you want to use the sass partials, import the files in the src folder:

@import 'node_modules/@ibm/type/src/_core.scss';
@import 'node_modules/@ibm/type/src/_styles.scss';
@import 'node_modules/@ibm/type/src/_width.scss';

Check out the Performance section below for a description of each partial.

Use this walkthrough to learn the foundational aspects of coding with the IBM Type. Recommended for all first-time users.

There are three distinct capabilities of this codebase and you are welcome to only import what you need:

1. Core - All capabilities not listed below.
2. Styles - Provides a map of the raw type scale and then a map and mixins of the type styles.
3. Width - When using IBM Type with IBM Grid, line lengths for the written content will be optically correct automatically.