Typeface

As the patented typeface for our diverse and global brand, IBM Plex is just as important as our name or our logo. It fine-tunes the tone of our words. It represents who we are and what we believe—as a company and as designers. Every decision is made with purpose; every detail has a reason for being.

With four subfamilies, eight weights and two styles (roman and italic), IBM Plex can do just about anything you need it to. Just download the latest from GitHub, add to your font manager, activate and enjoy. To learn more, with a deep dive into details and the story, visit the Plex website.

We’ve included the type tester so you can play with Plex and explore all its styles, weights and languages. The typeface really comes to life once it’s set in words or paragraphs, so feel free to type away.

IBM Plex comes with some additional basic features, such as ligatures across Sans and Serif, as well as fractions, arrows, alternate glyphs and global currency symbols. These elements can be accessed through OpenType features and glyph palettes in the available standard design tools. Get the latest Plex.

The monospaced version of IBM Plex is especially designed to fit every glyph into a 600 unit space, which takes its cues from the typewriter era. Monospaced fonts are used for coding by developers and should also be used to demonstrate code snippets in our communications and specifications.

IBM Plex covers over 100 languages with extended Latin versions. These languages cover the typographic needs for executing communications and other typographic situations across the international community. All four subfamilies are covered in the extended Latin, which includes Vietnamese. In addition, Plex covers a growing set of non-Latin scripts which currently include Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean and Thai.

Global languages are part of the long-term plan for the IBM Plex typeface family. Non-Latin language designs are currently in development. The available non-Latin languages are shown here along with what’s also in the pipeline.

IBM Plex® Math includes over 5,000 new glyphs, covering a wide range of mathematical symbols, such as alphanumeric, double-struck, Mono Fraktur, operators and script, as well as icons, arrows, Greek letters, phonetics, and technical and geometric shapes. It’s one of the most complete math fonts available today. Its compatibility with IBM Plex® Serif Regular makes it an ideal choice for IBM researchers and mathematicians. Note: Plex® Math must be used with LaTeX software or an equivalent to format or typeset math equations in text documents.

The IBM Plex design has been awarded a patent and is the intellectual property of IBM. The basic Open Font License (OFL) can be found in the downloadable font files. If alternative licensing is needed when embedding or bundling IBM Plex into software packages, contact the appropriate legal teams.

Because Plex is open source, we felt it was important to include it in the Google Fonts and Adobe Fonts libraries to make it available for anyone to use. However, the fonts in these libraries may not have the latest versions, so we always recommend going to the IBM Plex GitHub repo.

The IBM Plex team is a world-class group of type design experts, hailing from Austria, China, Croatia, Israel, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Poland, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. As the non-Latin variations grow more, so will our international team of type designers.

Recently, IBM Plex Sans and Mono were acquired into the permanent collection of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City. IBM Plex has gained recognition in the international type design community and has won various international competitions. Plex received its first international recognition in the Type Directors Club Competition, TDC 64 2018, where it won the Judge’s Choice for Typographic Excellence. In 2020, IBM Plex Sans Arabic was honored with a Pencil Award in the Type Design category at the prestigious D&AD Awards. Plex has also been granted several international patents.

Address all inquiries or issues on GitHub and be sure to download the latest versions here.