Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

IBM Type

ibm.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 130 posts

Re: IBM Type

#13

Post by andyjohnson0 »

Norther wrote: post #3

While interesting, is this really necessary? Call me skeptical, but value add = negligible, justification for an entire department to spend several months+ working = likely. I can see why companies like Apple and Microsoft would want to be involved in making fonts, they make their bread and butter by creating warm-fuzzies and having a consistent design language; IBM though, less so? Genuinely interested to hear other…

> IBM though, less so?

Why would IBM not also benefit from a consistent design language? Irrespective of what people might think of their products, they are involved in a wide range of business sectors (services, desktop, mainframe, AI, etc.) and I would have thought that consistent typography would help to give them a more integrated feel.

Sure there is an element of "me to" about this - Google, MS, Apple, even Oracle and Atlassian have design languages - but as someone with a general interest in typography I thought this looked pretty good.

Re: IBM Type

#14

Post by LoSboccacc »

I don't like that much the I serifs on the sans serif version. I prefer much when ambiguity with l is resolved trough cornering the l, like in Ubuntu or Source Sans Pro.

The rest seems quite nice, even if the chosen letter spacing feels a little weird

Re: IBM Type

#15

Post by PakG1 »

Norther wrote: post #3

While interesting, is this really necessary? Call me skeptical, but value add = negligible, justification for an entire department to spend several months+ working = likely. I can see why companies like Apple and Microsoft would want to be involved in making fonts, they make their bread and butter by creating warm-fuzzies and having a consistent design language; IBM though, less so? Genuinely interested to hear other…

I think when you're as big as IBM, you also need to have random people doing random stuff here and there, as who knows when you'd need something special unexpectedly or when you might suddenly have a hot product unexpectedly. As well, it's helpful to have random teams working on silly projects or even toys if only to keep people's minds fresh and flexible. If we're only always thinking about the value add, won't we become like the stock market analysts that only care about share price and end up giving advice only focused on the short-term? Of course too much waste is too much. But what's a small project here and there, especially if there are zero legal issues in a place like IBM where so much stuff has an "only built here" sentiment; I can't for the life of me imagine why IBM insisted on using Lotus Notes when I was there. I knew very few people who liked it.

Re: IBM Type

#16

Post by staticelf »

fredley wrote: post #11
silvestrov wrote: post #10

What's the license? Is this purely an internal IBM font?

https://github.com/IBM/type/blob/master/LICENSE.md > Copyright © 2017 IBM Corp. with Reserved Font Name "Plex" > This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.

Does this mean you can use it in commercial products?

Re: IBM Type

#17

Post by quincunx »

Norther wrote: post #3

While interesting, is this really necessary? Call me skeptical, but value add = negligible, justification for an entire department to spend several months+ working = likely. I can see why companies like Apple and Microsoft would want to be involved in making fonts, they make their bread and butter by creating warm-fuzzies and having a consistent design language; IBM though, less so? Genuinely interested to hear other…

There's this wonderful book, "Corporate Culture & Performance" by John P. Kotter - the biggest take-away for me was that companies under stress to perform will generally cargo-cult their behavior from successful times.

IBM building its own fonts to polish the nooks and crannies of their brand identity may well be such an instance where it is replicating behavior from the late 70's and early 80's of doing everything under the sun. Imho it should clearly not be a priority for them right now.

Re: IBM Type

#19

Post by fredley »

staticelf wrote: post #16
fredley wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/IBM/type/blob/master/LICENSE.md > Copyright © 2017 IBM Corp. with Reserved Font Name "Plex" > This Font Software is licensed under the SIL Open Font License, Version 1.1.

Does this mean you can use it in commercial products?

Yes. As far as I can tell (IANAL): you can do anything except sell it directly (unmodified), modify it in any way and sell/distribute it under the name Plex, or redistribute it (modified or unmodified) under any other licence.
Post reply on HN