Anyone else find these sort of sites annoying to navigate? How am I supposed to know how much I need to scroll down? Is the site broken or do I just need to scroll more?
Overall, I'm surprised it's taken IBM this long to put out a font.
I normally don't mind things like the NYT experimental pages, but this one is just egregious. When you get to the big IBM, nothing works but the scroll wheel for me.
I can't even use the arrow keys, page up/down, or home/end to navigate with my keyboard. I hate the amount of noise I make scrolling through websites like this.
I've never experienced a site where you can't scroll back up before. And then the navigation is a tiny strip of colour that's already closed so you have no signposting as to what the hell is going on? Kudos on the most counter intuitive website I have ever seen.
Any idea why they recommend TrueType over TrueType? Is that a general recommendation, or something specific to this typeface?
Edit: From BoldMonday's comment in issue 103: "TrueTypes can be - and in the case of IBM Plex are - specifically hinted for screen. OpenTypes with PostScript outlines are not able to do that."
FWIW: "Increasing resolutions and new approaches to screen rendering have reduced the requirement of extensive TrueType hinting. Apple's rendering approach on macOS ignores almost all the hints in a TrueType font, while Microsoft's ClearType ignores many hints, and according to Microsoft, works best with 'lightly hinted' fonts."[1]
Also, OTF is required for advanced typography features. Given that TrueType hinting is mostly ignored, OTF is generally a better choice.
From my experience dealing with IBM, I can only imagine this was the result of 5 different consulting teams, assisted by 3 different outsourced development groups, which was delayed numerous times, then Watson was added, and then a re-org caused by layoffs, which finally resulted in a website that couldn't scroll and caused the CPU of my high-end laptop to scream...
It feels like there should be a 9-digit contract with a hapless government entity that stands no chance of actually getting the font they thought they were paying for.
...and as a result a $6B payroll project will be cancelled because the integrator was depending on IBM Plex being a drop-in replacement for Comic Sans Bold.
You missed the most important part; it was initiated by a team of lawyers who were tipped off by another team who noticed the Watson design team were using a typeface on public websites which they didn't have the copyright to, and certainly didn't have the license to redistribute.
Also having worked at IBM in the 1990s, I can confirm that having corporate standards in place had little to do with what any individual team/department/division actually put on the public web sites. Pretty much the only bit that was controlled and monitored was the page header.
You missed the part where IBM outsourced the work out to a team in China, which outsourced part of it to a team in the Phillipines, which outsourced part of it to a team in India, which copy-pasted some open-sourced typeface made by some guy in the US.
I'm impressed with the number of people who think that JS on most people's webpages is a good idea. Or that any JS was necessary to announce this font. It wasn't and wasn't carried off well here (nothing for the no-JS crowd).
A far easier page to write up and one that would have looked better could have been done with nothing but HTML, CSS (demonstrating the font in real-world usage even), and perhaps some PNGs to show bitmaps of the font (useful for those who, wisely, don't load every font the page says to load).
It sure looks like it was designed by committee. It is one of the ugliest typefaces I have ever seen and, having studied typography, I have seen some really shitty ones. What were they thinking with the f and r? This is Times New Roman all over again.
Clarification: Times New Roman was designed for the London Times newspaper in 1929.
Silly me, I... heh, the first time I ever saw TnR was in relation to MS Word. And so I read this sentence thinking first about screen resolution, then "but why would you print ads in your documents"...
Being relevant? Their architectures and systems are quickly rising in popularity, their compiler is making great strides, and overall they're actively breaking into the HPC market, which they haven't been dominating in a very long time. I'd say they're extremely relevant, just perhaps not to your specific skillset.
Apple, Samsung, Netflix, now IBM... why does everyone need their own typeface? Is it to save on licensing fees? As a user, I don't really find these fonts very distinctive, so I don't associate them with their brands.
I think San Francisco and Roboto are distinctively Apple and Google respectively. I also think they matter more because they're system fonts on some of the biggest platforms (and maybe just because I happen to like them).
If I ever see this font again, I probably won't even know I'm looking at it.
Apple's always been focussed on design, in both marketing and UI. In marketing, for a long time everything was Apple Garamond, then Myriad. In the UI, Chicago and Geneva were heavy hitters. Now we have San Francisco. A key difference with this last one is that it's used in both the UI and in marketing.
Yeah, the various Garamond variants are classics (tracing their history all the way back to the 15th century!). Apple did commission a dedicated variant for themselves. Similarly, Apple used a Myriad variant, Myriad Apple. That said, my point wasn't that Apple only used Apple designed fonts (which isn't true), but that Apple has always focussed on design in general and typography in particular.
Especially with company with as many tentacles as IBM, having own typeface also helps ensure consistent design language across the company, both in terms of licensing (they can use it in any media/geography/field they need) and applicability (they can have all the variants etc needed).
Of course cost is also a major aspect. Random article claims that "Until recently, it [IBM] was spending over a million dollars each year to license Neue Helvetica for the company". With that sort of money you can afford to make your own fonts too.
While I'd agree that e.g. the Netflix font was somewhat non-remarkable/forgettable, I think they did manage to capture surprising amount of IBMness into Plex. I noticed it on their docs pages before they made big fuss about it, and really remarked to myself on how neat the font was.
I switched my editor default from Liberation Mono to this and it is almost the identical font. The only thing I don't like is the mono is not sans-serif so I'll stick with Liberation.
179 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 212 ms ] threadOverall, I'm surprised it's taken IBM this long to put out a font.
Things you expect to scroll the page:
* Arrow keys
* Scroll Bar
* Page Up/Down Keys
* Hold middle mouse button
* Scroll wheel (ONLY THIS WORKS)
* Mobile swipe (didn't test)
distinctly IBM indeed.
There is a reason they didn't stop improving on animations after the flip book was invented.
https://github.com/IBM/plex/releases/tag/v1.0.1
Edit: From BoldMonday's comment in issue 103: "TrueTypes can be - and in the case of IBM Plex are - specifically hinted for screen. OpenTypes with PostScript outlines are not able to do that."
Also, OTF is required for advanced typography features. Given that TrueType hinting is mostly ignored, OTF is generally a better choice.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueType#Macintosh_and_Microso...
(I have to change as now it downloads the whole repo as it used to be in a giant repo with no release.)
Almost 2 years later, Plex was born.
(This is a true story, by the way.)
Or so I thought, because I'm fairly certain everything we did in the 1990s has been thoroughly erased by ridiculous document retention policies.
https://github.com/IBM-Watson/design-guide/issues/120
And then they get sued by Plex, Inc and starts over.
The thing I haven't figured out yet is why they made it open source rather than keeping it exclusively for their own use.
I'm impressed with the number of people who think that JS on most people's webpages is a good idea. Or that any JS was necessary to announce this font. It wasn't and wasn't carried off well here (nothing for the no-JS crowd).
A far easier page to write up and one that would have looked better could have been done with nothing but HTML, CSS (demonstrating the font in real-world usage even), and perhaps some PNGs to show bitmaps of the font (useful for those who, wisely, don't load every font the page says to load).
https://github.com/IBM/plex has the free font.
In all CAPS below the picture, centered on the coffee mug it reads:
YOU ARE MY MOM
BECAUSE I AM YOUR SON
HAPPY MOTHERS DAY
Makes me wonder why it's not more popular today.
Silly me, I... heh, the first time I ever saw TnR was in relation to MS Word. And so I read this sentence thinking first about screen resolution, then "but why would you print ads in your documents"...
As for the rest:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/269396/global-market-sha...
It's too early to tell if that last quarter is an amazing turn-around trend, or an anomaly.
If I ever see this font again, I probably won't even know I'm looking at it.
Apple's always had their own typeface, though I don't remember them using one as heavily as San Francisco. But it feels very in-character for them.
Samsung did it, I suspect, because Apple did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography_of_Apple_Inc.
The key difference being that Garamond is a classic on its own, and Myriad is even the default font in Adobe products (at least InDesign).
That's exactly what I was getting at, thanks!
Of course cost is also a major aspect. Random article claims that "Until recently, it [IBM] was spending over a million dollars each year to license Neue Helvetica for the company". With that sort of money you can afford to make your own fonts too.
While I'd agree that e.g. the Netflix font was somewhat non-remarkable/forgettable, I think they did manage to capture surprising amount of IBMness into Plex. I noticed it on their docs pages before they made big fuss about it, and really remarked to myself on how neat the font was.
Plus, if their push is to tie the font back to IBM strongly, allowing anyone to freely use the font is good press, so why not?
What are some other corporate fonts?
Also it is not easy to tell l (lowercase L) and 1 (the number 1) apart in their monospaced font.
The font has just the right amount of whimsy/flair for me, and the style of the italics is pretty neat.
"Those curly braces are gorgeous"