IBM Plex® is IBM’s corporate typeface. It has been carefully designed to meet IBM’s needs as a global technology company and reflect their brand spirit, beliefs and design principles. IBM’s Universal Type Scale is a comprehensive collection of sizes, leadings, and weights for use in various applications and mediums from print to digital. I led the Figma implementation strategy for IBM’s Universal Type Scale, integrating Figma variable modes that support multiple languages, ensuring global accessibility and consistency across mediums.
The universal type scale is the relationship between type sizes and corresponding line heights that’s used throughout our design systems. The IBM line height adapts to the paragraph length and relative type size. The line height is usually larger for body type scales and becomes progressively tighter as the type size increases relative to the artboard. For certain type sizes, multiple line height options are provided to account for varying paragraph lengths and specific constraints.
While the default language for communication is US English, the IBM Plex font also has been created in multiple languages. Some alphabets have taller ascenders and longer descenders than others, necessitating an adjusted scale. Based on the particularities of each alphabet, we established two main categories.
Default scale
For Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew and Greek experiences, use the IBM type scales.
Adjusted scale
For Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Devanagari and Arabic experiences, decrease the type’s point size to 95% while keeping the same line height as in the default scale.
