IBM Plex Serif

Try IBM Plex Serif

Weights and styles

• Thin 100IBM Plex Serif Thin Thin Italic
• ExtraLight 200IBM Plex Serif ExtraLight ExtraLight Italic
• Light 300IBM Plex Serif Light Light Italic
• Regular 400IBM Plex Serif Regular Italic
• Medium 500IBM Plex Serif Medium Medium Italic
• SemiBold 600IBM Plex Serif SemiBold SemiBold Italic
• Bold 700IBM Plex Serif Bold Bold Italic

About IBM Plex Serif

IBM Plex Serif is a serif typeface built as the reading companion to IBM's Plex Sans and Plex Mono. Its serifs are flat and rectangular, joined to the stems with little curve, and the difference between thick and thin strokes stays moderate, so the letters keep the engineered look of the rest of the family. The official notes recommend the Serif for editorial work and call the italics unusually expressive. Seven weights run from Thin 100 to Bold 700, each with an italic, and the package contains them as 14 static TrueType files; it is not a variable font. Each font holds 832 glyphs covering Latin, Latin Extended, Cyrillic and Vietnamese. IBM's Brand & Experience team develops Plex as an open-source project. The font's credits name Mike Abbink, Paul van der Laan and Pieter van Rosmalen, with Bold Monday as manufacturer.

Where IBM Plex Serif works

Long-form articles

Moderate contrast and sturdy slab-like serifs hold up in paragraphs on screens as well as in print.

Reports and white papers

Regular, Medium and SemiBold with their italics give body text, emphasis and subheads from one set of files.

Large headlines in light weights

Thin 100 and ExtraLight 200 turn the rectangular serifs into fine lines that only show at big sizes.

Editorial layouts next to Plex Sans

The Serif carries the story while Plex Sans handles captions and navigation; the two were designed to work together.

Russian and Vietnamese editions

Cyrillic and Vietnamese character sets are built in, so translated editions keep the same typeface.

Glyphs

Language support

The family contains the core letters these languages are written with:

• English
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• Italian
• Dutch
• Swedish
• Norwegian
• Danish
• Finnish
• Icelandic
• Catalan
• Turkish
• Polish
• Czech
• Slovak
• Hungarian
• Romanian
• Croatian
• Slovenian
• Lithuanian
• Latvian
• Estonian
• Vietnamese
• Russian
• Ukrainian
• Bulgarian

Writing systems with glyphs in the family besides Latin: Cyrillic. These are listed as scripts, not as a promise for every language written in them.

Character sets found in the files: cyrillic, cyrillic-ext, latin, latin-ext, vietnamese. The language list is a check of required letters against the font, not a promise of typographic quality in each language.

License

Fonts that pair with IBM Plex Serif

Suggestions come from simple rules on the records: a contrasting classification and enough weights to carry body text. They are a starting point, not a verdict.

Use IBM Plex Serif on the web

Download the family and host the files on your own site, then declare them in CSS. Please do not link to the files on trendhub.net: preview files here are subsets and their addresses change.

@font-face {
  font-family: "IBM Plex Serif";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/IBMPlexSerif-Bold.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 700;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "IBM Plex Serif";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/IBMPlexSerif-BoldItalic.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 700;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "IBM Plex Serif";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/IBMPlexSerif-ExtraLight.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 200;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "IBM Plex Serif";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/IBMPlexSerif-ExtraLightItalic.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 200;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}
/* …and 10 more files in the package, declared the same way */

body {
  font-family: "IBM Plex Serif", serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves IBM Plex Serif with this markup:

<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=IBM+Plex+Serif:ital,wght@0,100;0,200;0,300;0,400;0,500;0,600;0,700;1,100;1,200;1,300;1,400;1,500;1,600;1,700&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

Static files, no variable version here

The package holds 14 separate files, one per weight and style. There is no weight axis.

Greek is missing

Unlike Plex Sans, the Serif covers Latin, Cyrillic and Vietnamese only.

The name Plex is reserved

The license notice reserves the font name “Plex”; a modified version needs a different name.

FAQs

Collections with IBM Plex Serif

• Type systems with matching sans, serif and mono families

  Families designed to be used together: a sans, a serif or slab and often a monospace that share proportions, weights and character.

Similar fonts

Other families in the same classification, ordered by shared use tags. All serif fonts