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ibm/plex

★ 11,355CSSAudience · designerComplexity · 1/5LicenseSetup · easy

TLDR

IBM Plex is IBM's open-source corporate typeface family, available in Sans, Serif, Mono, and Math styles with support for Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cyrillic, and more, free for any use under the Open Font License.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((repo))
    Font styles
      Sans
      Serif
      Mono
      Math
    Script support
      Latin and Cyrillic
      Arabic and Hebrew
      CJK scripts
      Devanagari
    Installation
      npm packages
      ZIP download
    License
      Open Font License
      Free commercial use
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Code map

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Add IBM Plex Sans or Mono to a web project by installing only the script npm packages you need

USE CASE 2

Use IBM Plex Mono as the code font in a developer tool, terminal theme, or technical blog

USE CASE 3

Apply IBM Plex Math in a scientific paper or academic web app for proper mathematical notation

USE CASE 4

Build a multilingual app using IBM Plex Sans packages for Arabic, Japanese, Korean, or Devanagari scripts

Tech stack

CSSnpm

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min
Use freely for any purpose including commercial products, you may modify the fonts but cannot sell them standalone as font software.

In plain English

IBM Plex is the official corporate typeface of IBM, released as an open-source font family under the Open Font License. That license allows anyone to download, use, and modify the fonts freely, including in commercial products. The typeface took two years to design and is described in the README as distinctly IBM in character. The family comes in four main styles: Sans (clean, without decorative strokes), Serif (with the traditional small strokes at the ends of letterforms), Mono (fixed-width, intended for displaying code or terminal output), and Sans Condensed (a narrower version of the sans-serif style). Each style includes both upright and true italic variants. One of the defining features of the Plex family is its language coverage. IBM Plex Sans supports extended Latin characters as well as Arabic, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, and Thai scripts. This breadth reflects IBM's identity as a global company, and each script family is available as a separate npm package for use in web projects. The repository also includes IBM Plex Math, a companion font for scientific and academic writing. It contains over 5,000 glyphs covering mathematical symbols, Greek letters, arrows, operators, Fraktur characters, and geometric shapes. According to the README, it is designed to pair with IBM Plex Serif and is positioned as an alternative to existing academic math fonts. Fonts can be downloaded as ZIP archives from the releases page or installed via npm packages. Each sub-family has its own package, such as @ibm/plex-sans or @ibm/plex-mono, making it straightforward to include only the scripts or styles a project needs.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Show me how to install IBM Plex Sans via npm and write the CSS import line to use it as the body font on a website
Prompt 2
I'm building a multilingual app with Arabic and Latin text, set up IBM Plex Sans Arabic and IBM Plex Sans together so text sizes match
Prompt 3
Generate a CSS snippet that uses IBM Plex Mono for all code blocks and IBM Plex Serif for body text on a developer blog
Prompt 4
Which @ibm/plex npm packages do I need to install to get IBM Plex Sans in Latin plus Japanese scripts only?
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