IBM Plex – A new typeface • Hacker News Board

Re: IBM Plex – A new typeface

#81

Post by chao- » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 9:06 PM UTC

This is one of the most frustrating page navigation experiences I have had in long a while. I tend to scroll with pgup/pgdn or arrow keys (or more occasionally, space/shift+space) and when I got to the big "IBM" logo the page just kind of stopped. I thought that was all.

It wasn't until I came to this thread I realized there was more, and I should look again, but even then it took me forever to:

1. Realize I needed to put my hand on my mouse, hover the tiny, thin red line to get it to expand, and then use that to navigate.

2. Flip between pgup/pgdn and arrow keys. Sometimes one set worked, sometimes another did, and it would flip at random points in the experience.

Why on earth would you selectively enable and disable the browser's interaction with common navigation keys repeatedly in the span of a single page? I can understand blocking/swallowing one set if you intend to use it somewhere for something else (i.e. the text input sections), but flipping them on and off with no other use for those keys while they are blocked? It boggles the mind.

Re: IBM Plex – A new typeface

#82

Post by chaoticmass » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 9:08 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #61

Nice. Is it available as a Selectric typeball?

They should make them as a promotional item.

Re: IBM Plex – A new typeface

#83

Post by amelius » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 9:08 PM UTC

If it's "distinctly IBM" then why is it interesting for the rest of us?

It also makes me wonder: is IBM trying to push subliminal advertisements for its brand through this typeface?

Re: IBM Plex – A new typeface

#84

Post by grzm » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

zokier wrote: post #63

grzm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography_of_Apple_Inc .

> Apple Garamond, then Myriad 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).

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.

Re: IBM Plex – A new typeface

#85

Post by paulie_a » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 9:11 PM UTC

Project manager for that site: "Hey need the most unusable website ever created, but with a modern feel. Bonuses of $1K for every anti pattern you can manage to incorporate"

Re: IBM Plex – A new typeface

#86

Post by ghaff » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

throwaway4719 wrote: post #74

ghaff wrote: post #70

Too bad the website is so poorly designed. It's actually a nice read through the design decisions. My first glance at the IBM serif made me think it was more of a slab serif like Stymie Bold but the discussion of its use in smaller sizes foes a nice job of explaining the differences.

How were you able to read anything?

There's a menu that you can click on at the top if you move your mouse/trackpad in the right way and that brings up additional pages. Whoever designed--and I use that word in the loosest possible sense--the pages needs some remedial web design school, as does anyone who approved it.

Re: IBM Plex – A new typeface

#87

Post by munk-a » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

chao- wrote: post #81

This is one of the most frustrating page navigation experiences I have had in long a while. I tend to scroll with pgup/pgdn or arrow keys (or more occasionally, space/shift+space) and when I got to the big "IBM" logo the page just kind of stopped. I thought that was all. It wasn't until I came to this thread I realized there was more, and I should look again, but even then it took me forever to: 1. Realize I needed t…

I think you just need to get hip to the Web6.0 design patterns. This site is just the beginning of the next style revolution... that we really need to get in front of and stop quickly.

Re: IBM Plex – A new typeface

#88

Post by codingdave » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

epc wrote: post #51

krona wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Almost 2 years later, Plex was born. (This is a true story, by the way.)

I'd hope you were kidding, because I went through this very thing, at IBM, in the 1990s and got a corporate legal standard put in place. Or so I thought, because I'm fairly certain everything we did in the 1990s has been thoroughly erased by ridiculous document retention policies.

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.

Re: IBM Plex – A new typeface

#89

Post by ddrmaxgt37 » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 9:18 PM UTC

grzm wrote: post #59

oddevan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of Netflix, it is specifically to save on licensing fees. Gotham is expensive, yo. 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.

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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography_of_Apple_Inc .

Also on physical products as well

Re: IBM Plex – A new typeface

#90

Post by mhd » Wed, Mar 28, 2018, 9:19 PM UTC

I first heard about this from the iA Writer blog[1], where they used Plex Mono for their own Duospace font. I've been using the font intermittently since then (I'm still somewhat of a Monaco fanboy on OS X), and I like it quite a lot.

[1]: https://ia.net/topics/in-search-of-the-perfect-writing-font/