5 ms·

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 grou

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...

luma 9y ago
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.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  ...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.
krona 9y ago
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.)
- dawnerd 9y ago
  > Plex was born. And then they get sued by Plex, Inc and starts over.
- mark-r 9y ago
  Thanks for that, I was wondering why they went to all the trouble of designing a new typeface. The thing I haven't figured out yet is why they made it open source rather than keeping it exclusively for their own use.
- epc 9y ago
  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.
  - codingdave 9y ago
    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.
- Maxious 9y ago
  "we are in the process of acquiring the rights and licensing for Helvetica Neue for IBM" [2015] https://github.com/IBM-Watson/design-guide/issues/120 https://github.com/IBM-Watson/design-guide/issues/120
  - noobermin 9y ago
    I actually don't hate the typeface (plex) but this backstory is just bonkers
- i_feel_great 9y ago
  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.
gshakir 9y ago
And "optimized" to run on their cloud bluemix or softlayer
forgotmypw 9y ago
Luckily, it's just blank without JS, so I was able to move on quickly.
- Digital-Citizen 9y ago
  I concur. 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 https://github.com/IBM/plex has the free font.
  - scoggs 9y ago
    Just one centered image of a coffee mug. The coffee mug has a goofy child's face only a mother could love. 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
oneplusone 9y ago
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.
- Bud 9y ago
  Huh? Times New Roman is at least acceptable; it's legible and was designed by a real type designer. Plex is a complete joke.
  - mark-r 9y ago
    Times New Roman was designed to squeeze as much text on a page as possible, probably to make more room for ads. Makes me wonder why it's not more popular today.
    - exikyut 9y ago
      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"...
- int_19h 9y ago
  The square t also makes my eyes bleed.

luma 9y ago

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.

Spooky23 9y ago
...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.

krona 9y ago

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.)

dawnerd 9y ago
> Plex was born. And then they get sued by Plex, Inc and starts over.
mark-r 9y ago
Thanks for that, I was wondering why they went to all the trouble of designing a new typeface. The thing I haven't figured out yet is why they made it open source rather than keeping it exclusively for their own use.
epc 9y ago
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.
- codingdave 9y ago
  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.
Maxious 9y ago
"we are in the process of acquiring the rights and licensing for Helvetica Neue for IBM" [2015] https://github.com/IBM-Watson/design-guide/issues/120 https://github.com/IBM-Watson/design-guide/issues/120
- noobermin 9y ago
  I actually don't hate the typeface (plex) but this backstory is just bonkers
i_feel_great 9y ago
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.

gshakir 9y ago

And "optimized" to run on their cloud bluemix or softlayer

forgotmypw 9y ago

Luckily, it's just blank without JS, so I was able to move on quickly.

Digital-Citizen 9y ago
I concur. 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 https://github.com/IBM/plex has the free font.
- scoggs 9y ago
  Just one centered image of a coffee mug. The coffee mug has a goofy child's face only a mother could love. 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

oneplusone 9y ago

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.

Bud 9y ago
Huh? Times New Roman is at least acceptable; it's legible and was designed by a real type designer. Plex is a complete joke.
- mark-r 9y ago
  Times New Roman was designed to squeeze as much text on a page as possible, probably to make more room for ads. Makes me wonder why it's not more popular today.
  - exikyut 9y ago
    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"...
int_19h 9y ago
The square t also makes my eyes bleed.