enterprise · light · sans · square · carbon · dense · technical
IBM
Carbon Design System made literal — pure-white canvas, IBM Plex Sans at light 300, square corners, and one assertive `#0f62fe` blue.
By webdesignhot · www.ibm.com
$ npx design-md add ibm
Learn more about the CLI → Compare to…
Adidas Pure-black sport-utility, AdihausDIN/adidasFG uppercase, three-stripe geometry — the engineering canon for global sportswear. Adobe Creative-suite chrome — paper-white canvas, magenta-to-orange wordmark gradient, and Adobe Clean carrying every product grid. AgentKit Three swappable themes for AI agent products — editorial dark, daylight bright, fintech cool-blue. Airbnb Pure-white marketplace canvas with one Rausch coral and Cereal — generous photography, soft pills, modest type. Airtable White-canvas editorial workflow software with full-bleed coral and forest signature cards punctuating a near-black pill-CTA system. Alibaba Electric orange `#ff6a00` + dense merchant grids — the global B2B wholesale floor as a website. Amazon Smile-orange CTA, Amazon Ember sans, dense product grids — the canonical everything-store interface. Amazon Web Services Squid-ink navy with Smile-orange CTAs — the densest tile-portal on the cloud-platform internet. Anthropic Editorial broadsheet for AI safety — cream canvas, Anthropic Serif body, terracotta clay accent, magazine geometry. Apple White-canvas product theatre — SF Pro Text, 980px pill CTAs, and a single-blue accent system. Apple Music Pink-red gradient hero with album-grid kinesthetics — SF Pro precision, signature `#fa233b` brand pink, glassy dark canvas. Apple TV+ Pure-black cinematic theatre with SF Pro and ruthless minimalism — content as the only voice. Arc Browser-as-personality marketing — buttery cream canvas, Marlin Soft display, hand-tooled blue-and-coral palette. Are.na Bare grey-and-orange minimalism — a single Helvetica-class sans, hairline borders, and a stubborn refusal to optimise for engagement. Asana Approachable work management in soft purple — Asana Sans at modest weights with a rainbow accent palette and warm sky-tinted whitespace. Astro Cosmos navy canvas with violet-to-orange brand gradient — Mona Sans display, Inter body, Astro''s star-chart MPA framework dressed as an observatory dashboard. ASUS Republic of Gamers red `#cd0000` on black with bold sans — Taiwan engineering meets esports brutalism. Audi Vorsprung durch Technik on near-black — Audi Type sans, four-rings precision, and a near-monochrome canvas with `#bb0a30` reserved for sport. Auth0 Twilight-blue dark canvas with TWK Lausanne 300 display + Aeonik body — the original identity-platform aesthetic. Axiom Deep-navy observability with a cyan electric accent — Inter for body, JetBrains Mono for every event label, and a structural grid that reads as logs at planet scale. Axios Smart-brevity in chromatic form — blocky white canvas, Tiempos-flavored Atiza serif, signature `Why it matters:` time-bars and bullet-first prose. Base Coinbase-adjacent L2 minimalism — coinbaseSans on white, signature electric blue Baseten White canvas with Inter and a signature `#6c5ce7` purple — ML model deployment dressed in approachable workshop chrome. BBC News Signature BBC red (`#bb1919`), Reith Sans + Reith Serif, the global broadcaster authority typography of the world''s public-service news. Bear Off-white canvas, a custom bearsans display, a red bear icon, and tealish handwritten underlines — a Markdown notes app dressed as a Mac Pro magazine. beehiiv Aggressive black-on-yellow newsletter punch — heavy display sans, hyper-flat cards, and a `#ffd60a` highway-yellow that reads like a tabloid front page. Binance Trading-floor near-black with a single high-voltage Binance Yellow doing all the brand work — BinanceNova for type, BinancePlex for numbers. Bloomberg Iconic black-orange financial broadsheet — BWHaasHead headlines, AvenirNextPForBBG chrome, terminal-grade data density. Bluesky Sky-blue `#0085ff` on bright white with Inter sans — the AT-Protocol social network rendered as airy, federated, open. Blur Pure-black canvas, neon `#ff8700` orange voltage, and JetBrains-Mono-default everywhere — brutalist NFT trader terminal as competitive instrument. BMW Corporate-blue calm — BMW Type Next on a cream-tinted white, dark navy hero bands, and the M-stripe triplet in reserve. BMW M Performance black on M-blue/M-violet/M-red — the motorsport variant that turns BMW corporate into track-day theatre. Booking.com Deep-blue commerce engine — Bookin Sans on white, yellow CTA voltage, dense booking-funnel maximalism. Bose Pure black canvas, Helvetica restraint, and premium-audio confidence — sound presented as engineering art. Brex Cool grey-blue surfaces, magenta-to-purple-to-indigo gradient, Söhne 600 — fintech as fast, modern, slightly flashy. Bugatti French-engineered austerity — pure black canvas, three Bugatti typefaces, and full-bleed photography as the only voltage. Bun Cream canvas with chunky pink accents and the wide-eyed mascot — a JS runtime dressed as a 1970s bakery sign. Cal.com Open-source calendly with one bold custom font — Cal Sans on a soft `#f4f4f4` paper canvas. Calm Signature `#0066ff` deep blue + Aktiv Grotesk + meditation-deep cool atmospheric calm. Capacities Cream-yellow canvas, Inter at 700 with a Crimson Pro serif fallback, and a yellow underline as page ornament — a PKM that thinks like a sketchbook. Cartesia Bright clinical white with a single deep-blue action — voice-AI presented as scientific instrument rather than consumer product. Cash App Electric `#00d54b` green on near-black, Cash Sans monospace-flavoured geometry, and p2p-money youth aesthetic. Character.AI Cool zinc canvas, custom atHauss sans, and dark pill CTAs — a roleplay social product dressed in TikTok-grade neutrality. Chevrolet Gold-cross American classic — Louis sans on white with a `#cd9834` bowtie, a `#003876` corporate blue, and Camaro/Corvette red drama in reserve. Claude.ai Cream paper canvas, Anthropic Sans for body and Anthropic Serif for the headline — an AI assistant set in literary type. Clerk Geist + Suisse on near-black canvas with `#6c47ff` violet CTA — the drop-in-auth dev-tool aesthetic. ClickHouse Near-pure black canvas with electric yellow as the brand voltage — database performance dressed in voltmeter chrome. Cloudinary Media-API technical infrastructure in confident blue — Inter at modest weights with a deep navy-blue brand and a single chromatic accent for media moments. Cohere Stark white editorial canvas with deep green-black product bands and a CohereText/Unica77 type split. Coinbase Institutional-grade calm — pure white canvas, a single Coinbase Blue, and Coinbase Display set at weight 400 instead of 700. Composio Near-black canvas with deep-electric-blue voltage and a 2x2 terminal-mockup hero — agent infrastructure dressed as developer instrumentation. Corsair Yellow `#ffff00` lightning on black with Roboto — RGB-everything peripherals and PC components. Costco Warehouse blue + signature red, Helvetica utilitarian — bulk-buying signage translated to web. Coursera University-blue `#0056d2` on warm-white parchment with Source Sans — the canonical online-degree marketplace. Cursor Warm cream IDE-marketing — `#f7f7f4` canvas, `#26251e` ink, custom CursorGothic display, JetBrains Mono code, vivid orange accent. Datadog NationalWeb on white with the iconic `#632ca6` purple — observability dressed as an enterprise dashboard, structurally dense, chromatically restrained, multicolour where the data demands it. Deel A warm dark canvas with electric coral and orange accents — global payroll dressed as a confident product portrait. DeepSeek Deep-blue Chinese-tech minimalism — a research lab dressed in `#4d6bfe` and stark white space. Dell Pragmatic blue `#007db8` with custom Roboto-derivative — business-first PC commerce since the dorm room. Deno Inkwell black on warm white with the dinosaur mascot — TypeScript runtime as Eric Carle children's book. Descript Cream-pink canvas, a custom Brett display serif, and a wine-dark CTA — an AI video editor that ships like a magazine. Discord Indigo-ground hangout — gg sans body, ABC Ginto Nord display, 12-16px tile radii, white pill CTAs. Disney+ Deep navy gradient streaming hall with custom Inspire display sans and the unmistakable Disney+ wordmark arc. DoorDash Signature red-orange CTA, custom DoorDash Sans, delivery-funnel commerce — the dominant on-demand local marketplace. ElevenLabs Near-black voice-tech ground with white voice-wave aesthetic — Inter at studio scale, pill CTAs, and a single saturated accent that reads as both wayfinding and brand. Epic Games Pure-black canvas with custom Brutal Type / Heading Now display — Fortnite-saturated marketing meets PC-storefront merchandising. Ethereum Off-white canvas, ethereum-blue `#1c64f2` voltage, and Inter + serif duet — community-owned protocol as open documentation. Etsy Burnt-orange CTA, Graphik humanist sans, handcrafted-warmth aesthetic — the marketplace for makers and small batch. Excalidraw Literal hand-drawn whiteboard — wobbly SVG strokes, Virgil-style handwriting, and a deliberately primitive UI that turns digital sketching into nostalgia. Expedia Navy commerce + Mango yellow voltage — Expedia Sans, dense travel-funnel density with One Key loyalty colour-coding. Fantastical White paper, Effra geometric sans, full-round blue pills, and a rainbow of app-icon glass squares — a calendar app marketed like Apple''s Pro Apps. Ferrari Cinematic editorial in near-black — Rosso Corsa restraint, FerrariSans 500, and full-bleed cavallino photography. Figma Bright multi-color section bands with figmaSans display and figmaMono eyebrows — a marketing site that designs in scenes. Financial Times Salmon-pink page (`#fff1e5`) — the world''s most recognizable newspaper background, paired with Financier display + MetricWeb sans for global markets coverage. Fireworks AI Light canvas with Inter sans and a signature `#6720ff` purple-amber-orange spark — fast-inference platform dressed in speed-of-light kinetic chrome. Fly.io Mackinac display + Fragment Mono on a violet-saturated canvas — a PaaS that dresses like a small-press magazine. Ford American-truck heritage in corporate blue — Antenna sans, oval-script wordmark, and a deep `#003478` voltage that has carried the brand since 1927. Framer Black-on-white maximalism with electric gradient floods — Inter Display at heroic sizes, motion as a first-class material. Frontegg PP Neue Machina display + Neue Montreal body — plug-and-play user-management with deep-blue gravitas. Gemini (Google) Blue-into-violet gradient, Google Sans, soft Material 3 surfaces — Google''s house style applied to a chat interface. Ghost Warm-cream content CMS aesthetic — Inter for chrome, a soft serif for the writing surface, and a single confident green for action. GitHub Dark-canvas developer-platform marketing — Mona Sans variable headings, lime-green accent, near-black ground. GitHub Copilot Pure-white canvas, pure-black inverted CTAs, Mona Sans display — GitHub's editorial confidence applied to AI tooling. Grafana Dark observability canvas with the iconic `#f46800` orange — Inter for body, Roboto Mono everywhere a label hides, multi-colour chart palette ripped straight from a real dashboard. Granola White paper, a custom Quadrant book serif, and an olive-green CTA — an AI notepad that dresses like a stationery shop. Grubhub Friendly red-orange CTA, Sentinel display + Avenir body, dense delivery-app commerce — the long-running incumbent. HashiCorp Black canvas hosting a per-product color portfolio — Terraform purple, Vault yellow, Consul red, Waypoint cyan — multi-product identity made literal. Hashnode Developer publishing platform — deep navy canvas, electric blue brand, Inter sans + JetBrains Mono code chrome. HBO Max Deep purple-black premium streaming canvas with custom Sharp Grotesk and the unmistakable Max wordmark. Headspace Signature `#ffac1d` orange + custom round display + meditation-friendly playful warmth. Height AI-PM workspace dressed in chalk pastels — Inter at modest weights over a near-paper canvas, with a single confident accent and an AI-purple voltage moment. Honda Reliability-first restraint — HondaGlobalFont on white, signature red HP Cyan-blue `#0096d6` HP-circle on white with Forma DJR — the 84-year-old technology brand''s mainstream face. Hugging Face AI community canvas — deep blue-black ground, Source Sans Pro headlines, pill auth + 8px tile cards. Hulu Near-black canvas anchored on Hulu Green `#1ce783` with Graphik sans — the bright, cable-meets-streaming UI. Ideogram A bright white canvas with a single saturated violet cue — a typography-first AI image tool that lets the gallery do all the talking. Instacart Grocery-shopping-list practical — Instacart Sans on white, signature carrot green Kagi A premium search engine dressed in warm cream and Plex — the indie answer to ad-funded search. KAYAK Burnt-orange flight-search density — Open Sans on white, comparison-engine maximalism, price-graph data viz. Khan Academy Signature `#14bf96` mint green on white with Lato sans — free-for-everyone education in a warm, encouraging register. Kinde White canvas with Inter 72/500 display + dev-friendly pink-coral accent — the approachable auth-billing-access platform. Kit A cream newsletter canvas with a custom KitSans display, a Libre Franklin secondary, and a pastel-rainbow chip set — the editorial register reborn from ConvertKit. Kraken Kraken Purple `#7132f5` on white — Kraken-Brand display + Kraken-Product UI for a calmer, less-bombastic crypto exchange. Krea A pure-black studio with Suisse Intl set quietly at 60px — a creative-AI gallery that lets the work and the cobalt CTA carry the colour. Lamborghini Cathedral of darkness — true black canvas, Lamborghini Gold accents, and LamboType angled-terminal display. LangChain Deep navy canvas with Inter precision and a quietly confident teal accent — agent orchestration dressed as engineering documentation. Linear Dark-canvas product surface — pure-black ground, indigo accent, custom Inter weights, pill CTAs. LiveKit Realtime audio-video infra — Public Sans 300 weight on near-black, signature cyan LlamaIndex White canvas with Inter and a signature `#1b9aff` blue — RAG infrastructure dressed as a clean technical reference card. Logitech Soft consumer-tech blue gradients with Brown sans — design for the way you work, play, and create. Lovable Pink-into-violet gradient on white — vibe-coding dressed in playful, friendly chromatics. Magic Eden Mint-cream canvas, magenta-mint accent duet, and a custom Foundry display — Solana-native marketplace as boutique gallery. Mailchimp Cavendish-yellow chunkiness — a custom display serif (Cooper Light), the signature `#ffe01b` block, and a brand voice that hugs you while it ships campaigns. Mastercard Cream-canvas editorial fintech, circular-portrait orbits, MarkForMC at 450 weight — institutional-but-warm payments brand. MasterClass Pure-black cinema with custom display serif and editorial reverence — celebrity-instructor learning as a premium streaming product. Medium Editorial reading-first publishing — magazine-grade serif body, GT Super display, signature green-on-white pill CTAs. Mercedes-Benz Three-pointed-star authority — MBCorpo on near-black canvas, silver-blue Mercury A near-pure white canvas with a literary serif headline and a signature mercury-mint accent — banking dressed as a quiet magazine. Meta Optimistic blue (#0467df) on a white corporate canvas — Optimistic Display headlines, generous space, social-platform conglomerate at rest. Microsoft Fluent surfaces — off-white canvas, Segoe UI Variable Display, and a Cortana-blue action color carrying every product. Midjourney A deep cosmic canvas where JetBrains Mono headlines float over a wide-gamut OKLCH rainbow — a research lab dressed as a chapel. MiniMax Stark monochrome canvas broken open by vibrant gradient product cards — coral, magenta, blue, purple as model identity. Mintlify Documentation-platform marketing — pure white canvas, mint-green accent, Inter at tight tracking, near-black pill CTAs. Miro Canary-yellow Mistral Butter-yellow canvas, Arial as a deliberate anti-tech statement, and zero-radius rectangles — French AI as a brutalist art-school manifesto. Modal Serverless GPU infra in lime-green — `#0c0c0c` canvas, electric `#7fee64` accent, custom Modal Mono on every chip and code block. Monday.com Project management in confident red-pink — Poppins display at bold weights with a colorful saturated palette and a playfully energetic visual rhythm. MongoDB Signature MongoDB green Motion AI-calendar productivity in green-and-purple — Inter at modest weights with a green-to-purple voltage gradient signaling the AI scheduler, anchored by a clean white canvas. MSI Dragon-red `#ff0000` on jet black with bold display sans — the Taipei dragon-heritage gaming hardware brand. Mux Video API for developers — Aeonik on light-cream, Rotonto display, JetBrainsMono CTAs, sharp 0px corners. Neon Serverless Postgres dressed in late-night green — a near-black canvas with a single electric mint accent. Netflix Pure-black streaming theatre with signature `#e50914` red and Netflix Sans — the canonical media-tile grid. Nike Pure black, pure white, Helvetica Now — pill CTAs and full-bleed athletic photography on a single soft cloud gray. Notion Off-white canvas with Lyon serif accents and a custom NotionInter — a workspace dressed as a literary magazine. Nuxt Forest-green `#00dc82` glow on a near-black canvas — Vue-flavored warmth dressed for the cosmos. NVIDIA Engineering-grade canvas — pure black hero / paper-white body / one violently saturated `#76b900` green that carries every CTA and corner square. Omnivore Open-source read-it-later — near-white reading canvas, focused emerald-on-paper brand, archival elegance after the Eleven Labs sunset. OpenAI Pure white canvas, OpenAI Sans set in calm 500-weight, and a single black pill for the only action that matters — try ChatGPT. OpenRouter Pure-black canvas with custom display typography and pragmatic mono — LLM-router infrastructure dressed as a terminal billing dashboard. OpenSea Pure-black canvas, electric `#2081e2` blue, and Inter at trader-pro density — the original NFT marketplace as financial terminal. Optimism Pure-white canvas, signature `#ff0420` red voltage, and Inter at confident L2 register — Ethereum rollup as bold optimistic infrastructure. Ory White canvas with Inter 48/400 display + signature deep-navy `#0f172a` CTA — open-source-first identity for technical teams. Oura Pure-black canvas with Inter precision and gold-stamped scores — the premium-ring health-precision aesthetic. Paper Website A literal sheet-of-paper website — single literary serif, off-white sheet canvas, narrow reading columns, ink-blue links. PayPal Dual-blue corporate trust — PayPal Sans Big over white, with a deep-navy ink and a sky-blue counterpoint. Peloton Signature `#cb1e4e` red on midnight ink, Inter display, instructor-led premium-fitness storefront. Perplexity Cream paper canvas, custom pplxSans, and the unmistakable Tropic-cyan accent — a reference-library answer engine dressed in warm tones. Pinecone White canvas with Inter and a signature `#1cb0d0` cyan — vector database technical-marketing dressed in clean blueprint chrome. Plaid Pale blue trust on white, classical Stripe-adjacent type, and a Benjamin-Franklin-as-mascot moment of personality. Plain B2B support tool with a Dinamo grotesk and a single radioactive `#1ad379` action — Linear-restraint applied to support. PlanetScale Pure-black canvas, blood-red accent, mono-set numerals — a database brand styled like a financial terminal. Polar Dev-tool obsidian — 8rem editorial display headlines, indigo accents, Louize serif moments. Polygon Deep purple `#8247e5` voltage, soft surface ladder, and Inter at enterprise calm — Ethereum L2 as institutional infrastructure. Porsche Engineering-purity black-on-white — Porsche Next at 96px regular, Rosso PostHog Cream-canvas analytics with mustard-yellow CTAs and IBM Plex — open-source craft, not SaaS gloss. Postmark Postal-yellow #ffde00 + warm-black #1c1d1f + paper-white canvas — the transactional email API designed like a friendly post office sign. Prime Video Amazon-blue streaming canvas with Ember sans and the dense, utility-first marketplace UI vocabulary. PropelAuth White canvas with SF Pro Rounded display 60/900 + deep-navy ink — B2B multi-tenant auth with Apple-tinted polish. Qwik Electric purple-to-blue gradient on near-black — resumable execution dressed as a lightning bolt. Railway Ship software peacefully — IBM Plex Serif headlines on a deep eggplant canvas, with a single confident violet for action. Raindrop.io White paper, system-ui sans, soft watercolor blob backgrounds, and a vivid `#0b7ed0` blue CTA — a bookmark manager that ships like a creative-tool sketch. Ramp Off-yellow `#fcfb70` and black-on-white editorial — finance ops dressed as a printed annual report. Raycast Near-black canvas, glowing keycaps, monospaced shortcut chips — a marketing site that thinks like a launcher. Razer Neon `#44d62c` snake-green on jet black with Roboto — the For Gamers, By Gamers visual signature. Readwise Pastel-orange book-club warmth — soft cream canvas, friendly Tiempos serif accents, and a tangerine that signals 'this is your library.' Reddit Front-page-of-the-internet orange — community-card density, IBM Plex Sans display, and a confident Remix Signature `#3992ff` blue on pure white with Inter — a nested-routes web framework dressed as a manifesto poster. Render Lavender on white — a PaaS that swapped Heroku purple for a candy-bright #8a05ff and kept the airy whitespace. Replicate AI-API marketing — light page chrome, dark hero canvas, rb-Freigeist Neue display, JetBrains Mono code, sharp 0px corners. Replit Saturated turquoise on `#0e1525` ink — the cloud-IDE aesthetic with IBM Plex DNA and a JetBrains Mono soul. Resend Pure-black canvas with Domaine Display serif at 96px and Commit Mono code chips — email infra that thinks in italics. Retool Pragmatic blue #3a55fc + Inter + dense product mocks — the internal-tool platform that designed itself like a well-organised admin panel. Reuters Global newswire restraint — signature orange (`#ff8000`), Knowledge Medium custom sans, broadsheet rigor for the world''s oldest news agency. Riot Games Crimson `#d13639` red on near-black with custom Riot Beam display — esports-tournament drama and competitive-MOBA editorial. Rive Chunky animated display type and saturated playful colour — interactive graphics platform that wears its motion design on its sleeve. Roblox Bright `#ed1d24` red on white with Builder Sans — the youth-block-builder playground turned multi-billion-game social platform. RunPod Deep slate canvas with Inter and a signature `#673ab7` purple — accessible GPU cloud dressed in friendly developer chrome. Runway A near-black research canvas with ABC Normal headlines pulled tight at -2.5px — a film studio, an ML lab, and a brutalist gallery in one shell. Salesforce Cloud-trust dashboards — Salesforce Sans on a sky-blue ground, with Astro the bear standing guard over a dense CRM portal. SAP Enterprise-ERP precision in cobalt — SAP72 sans, signal-blue accents, and a calm white canvas built for trust. Segment Twilio Segment's customer-data-platform canvas — Whitney SSm humanist sans, navy-on-white, single confident `#1866ee` blue. Semafor Paper-cream canvas (`#f8f5d7`) with FeatureFlatHeadline serif and signature flag-style topic columns — global-news editorial built for the post-Twitter era. SendGrid Functional API-blue on white — the email-platform dashboard aesthetic, now folded under the Twilio umbrella. Sentry Deep-aubergine observability — Dammit Sans display, Rubik body, JetBrains Mono code, signature violet #7553ff and pill CTAs. shadcn/ui Copy-paste components in pure black-on-white — the most influential design system not actually shipped as a library. Shopify Dark-first commerce theatre — 96px NeueHaasGrotesk at weight 330, electric mint focus rings, and stacked multi-layer shadows. Signal Privacy-first messaging in `#3a76f0` Signal blue with Inter sans — minimal, ad-free, end-to-end-encrypted by default. Slack Aubergine workspace marketing — Salesforce-Avant-Garde headlines, all-caps 4px CTAs, white canvas with `#4a154b` accents. SolidJS Deep navy with a blue-to-cyan brand gradient — reactive primitives dressed as a circuit diagram. Sonos Pure black canvas, Inter typography, and audio-system minimalism — speakers presented as gallery objects. SoundCloud Signature `#ff5500` orange on `#f2f2f2` paper with Interstate sans — waveform-first audio social UI. SpaceX Pure-black cinematic photography, D-DIN aerospace stencil type, ghost-button minimalism — the interface disappears. Spotify Electric `#1ed760` green on near-black canvas with Spotify Mix sans — the canonical streaming-audio tile grid. Square Pure black on pure white, Square Sans grids, and retail-POS minimalism — commerce as black-and-white geometry. Starbucks Forest-green storefront — SoDoSans, full-pill buttons, warm-cream canvas, and a floating Frap CTA the brand calls home. Steam Deep blue-gray `#1b2838` with Motiva Sans — the utilitarian PC-gaming library that runs the world's largest digital storefront. SteelSeries Esports orange `#ff6900` on near-black with Inter — Danish precision peripherals for competitive play. Strava Signature `#fc4c02` orange + Inter on white — endurance-athlete data-driven storefront with map-overlay heritage. Stripe Editorial fintech polish — light Söhne headlines at weight 300, navy-not-black text, signature `#533afd` purple CTAs. Stytch Paper-cream canvas with Booton display + Chivo Mono body — passwordless-modern auth, joined Twilio. Substack Magazine-on-the-internet — Spectral serif body at 19px, Cahuenga display, signature `#ff6719` orange CTAs. Suno A near-black booth with cream Neue Montreal and a hot-pink cue light — a music studio, a record sleeve, and a chat app fused into one canvas. Sunsama Thoughtful daily planning in warm cream and ink — Inter at modest weights over a paper-cream canvas with sage and rose accents and a calm, unhurried voice. Supabase Off-black canvas, signature emerald `#3ecf8e`, Circular as display, Postgres-grade type discipline. Superhuman White paper canvas, a custom Super Sans variable, and a single confident lavender — premium email dressed as a stationery brand. Supreme Box-logo red, Courier monospace, skate-deadpan minimalism — the most influential streetwear store on the web. Svelte Hot orange #ff3e00 against clean white with a confident sans — the framework that wears its flame as a wordmark. Tailwind CSS The system applied to itself — Inter Variable on white canvas, signature cyan #06b6d4, every component built from Tailwind utilities. Tana Pure black canvas, a custom tanaClassic serif at 83px, and a pale-pistachio CTA — a knowledge graph dressed as a literary supplement. Target Bullseye red CTA, Helvetica Neue, photographic hero — friendly mass-market design with confident chromatic restraint. Telegram Cloud-blue messaging — Tesla Cinematic showroom on white — one Electric Blue CTA, Universal Sans, and viewport-height car photography. The Atlantic Modern serif headlines on cream-paper, signature Atlantic orange `#fbb33b`, long-form magazine reading rendered for the web. The Economist Deep cinnabar red `#e3120b`, Milo serif body, Econ Sans labels — the global-affairs weekly rendered with cover-illustration discipline. The Guardian Guardian Egyptian slab serif, signature navy `#052962`, structured ruled hierarchy with bold section accents. The New York Times Cheltenham serif headlines on paper-white, signature breaking-news red, the canonical American broadsheet rendered for the web. The New Yorker Adobe Caslon Pro + Irvin headline cap — a century of editorial gravitas in cream paper, ink black, and signature cartoon line. The Washington Post Postoni serif blackletter masthead, "Democracy Dies in Darkness" tagline, sober ink-on-paper political broadsheet. Things Cool light-blue canvas, system-ui sans, vivid Things-blue accent — a task manager that ships like an Apple Pro Display. Threads Instagram-adjacent text-first social — pure-black canvas, system-sans clarity, and a quiet brand restraint built from the @ glyph alone. TikTok Electric cyan-magenta on pure black — vertical-video voltage with custom Proxima Nova display and a bold neon brand grammar. tldraw Casual whiteboard sketchy — hand-drawn UI primitives, dotted-grid canvas, and a soft pastel palette that wears its toy-like energy with confidence. Together AI Deep navy on near-white with Inter sans — open-source LLM cloud rendered as developer-platform infrastructure. Toyota Japanese-reliability mainstream — `#eb0a1e` Toyota red on white, ToyotaType sans, and a calm-confident marketing surface for the world's most-sold automotive brand. Turbo Vercel-grade pure-black canvas with a magenta-to-blue Turbo gradient — the build system that wears its speed as a sweep. Turso SQLite at the edge — a deep-teal canvas with a CRT-bright cyan accent (#00face) that reads as a glowing edge node. Twilio Signal-red `#f22f46` against clean white — communications APIs given the visual weight of a broadcast colour. Twitch Purple `#9146ff` on `#0e0e10` canvas with Inter — the live-streaming UI built around chat, raids, and gaming density. Uber Eats Pure-black ground, Uber Move custom sans, Uber-app continuity — the operating system of food delivery. Udemy Signature `#a435f0` purple on white with Sailec sans — the open course-marketplace bazaar made approachable. Uniqlo Signature red `#ff0000`, Helvetica Neue system stack, japanese-utility-functional grid — the LifeWear engine. v0 A near-white prompt canvas with GeistSans and pure OKLCH grayscale — Vercel''s AI builder dressed as the calmest text editor on the internet. Venmo A single confident `#3d95ce` blue, Aktiv Grotesk geometry, and a social-feed informality — payments dressed as group chat. Vercel Brutalist developer-product polish — near-white canvas, near-pure black-on-near-white type, Geist sans + mono, conic-gradient accents. Vite Electric purple #646cff + Manrope display + a literal lightning-bolt mark — the build tool that designed itself to feel as fast as it is. Vodafone Vodafone Red broadcast band, monumental 144px display, two-tier button system — corporate-newsroom telecom design. Volkswagen People's-car blue — the deep `#001e50` corporate hue, custom VW Sans, and a friendly-German marketing surface that sells everyday mobility with confidence. Walmart Spark-yellow on big-box blue, Antonio Display + Bogle sans — everyday low prices made loud. Warp Near-black canvas, neon-lime cursor, real terminal screenshots — a marketing site that boots like a shell. Weaviate White canvas with Inter and a signature `#1cdb46` open-source green — modular vector database dressed in approachable engineering chrome. webdesignhot AI-era editorial dark — pure black with one acid-lime accent. Webflow Indigo-to-purple gradient discipline with a precise structural sans — the visual builder that markets itself like a design conference. WHOOP Lime `#a0d10b` voltage on jet-black, Inter precision, recovery-data athlete-grade aesthetic. WIRED Newsstand-density editorial grid, sharp-corner buttons, mono ALL-CAPS kickers — Conde Nast meets engineering lab. Wise A flexible bright-lime green on cream-white — money that travels in sans-serif and a single confident accent. Workday HR-warm professional in tangerine — Adelle Sans humanist curves, signature `#f37721` orange, and a calm white people-first canvas. WorkOS Pure-white canvas with Untitled Sans 80/500 display + indigo-violet h2 — the B2B-enterprise gravitas aesthetic. X Pure-black canvas with Chirp display — algorithmic minimalism, single-letter wordmark, ruthless type discipline. Y Combinator Brutalist orange monolith — system-font sans on white canvas, signature `#f26625` orange-red blocks with hard 0px corners. You.com Crisp white developer-doc canvas, custom Lumen Sans, and the indigo `#5368EE` accent — a search API rebrand done as enterprise infrastructure. YouTube YouTube Sans + Roboto + signature `#ff0000` red — content-density at planetary scale. Zora Cream-white canvas, electric purple-orange duet, and a custom display — onchain creator network as zine cover.
try on →
1440 × 900
mobile · 390 × 844
Tokens design.md/v1.5
- bg
#ffffff - surface
#ffffff - surface-soft
#f4f4f4 - surface-strong
#e0e0e0 - surface-dark
#161616 - surface-dark-elev
#262626 - text AAA · 18.1
#161616 - text-strong
#161616 - text-body
#161616 - text-muted
#525252 - text-soft
#8c8c8c - text-on-dark
#ffffff - text-on-dark-mute
#c6c6c6 - brand AA · 5.0
#0f62fe - brand-hover
#0050e6 - brand-active
#002d9c - brand-deep
#0043ce - on-brand
#ffffff - border — · 1.3
#e0e0e0 - border-strong AAA · 18.1
#161616 - border-on-dark
#5e5e5e - link
#0f62fe - link-hover
#0043ce - focus
#0f62fe - scrim
rgba(0,0,0,0.5) - success
#24a148 - success-soft
#defbe6 - warning
#f1c21b - warning-soft
#fcf4d6 - danger
#da1e28 - danger-soft
#fff1f1 - info
#0f62fe - info-soft
#edf5ff - cool-gray-bg
#f2f4f8 - hero-blue-tint
#e8eaff
Ship faster than ever.
display-xl "IBM Plex Sans" 76px w300 -0.5px
Ship faster than ever.
display-lg "IBM Plex Sans" 60px w300 -0.4px
Ship faster than ever.
display-md "IBM Plex Sans" 42px w300 0
Ship faster than ever.
headline "IBM Plex Sans" 32px w400 0
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
card-title "IBM Plex Sans" 24px w400 0
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
subhead "IBM Plex Sans" 20px w400 0
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
body-lg "IBM Plex Sans" 18px w400 0
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
body "IBM Plex Sans" 16px w400 0.16px
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
link "IBM Plex Sans" 16px w400 0.16px
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
body-sm "IBM Plex Sans" 14px w400 0.16px
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
body-emphasis "IBM Plex Sans" 14px w600 0.16px
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
button "IBM Plex Sans" 14px w400 0.16px
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
eyebrow "IBM Plex Sans" 14px w400 0.16px
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
nav-link "IBM Plex Sans" 14px w400 0.16px
npx design-md add linear
code "IBM Plex Mono" 14px w400 0
OUR DESIGN SYSTEM
caption "IBM Plex Sans" 12px w400 0.32px
- step-0 4px
- step-1 8px
- step-2 12px
- step-3 16px
- step-4 24px
- step-5 32px
- step-6 48px
- step-7 64px
- step-8 96px
- none
0px - micro
2px - sm
4px - md
6px - lg
8px - pill
9999px
Text link →
Card preview
A complete kit — everything your product needs.
Hero, pricing, FAQ, dashboard, docs — every layout your product needs.
New
Stable
v1.0
Export
4 formats · paste-ready
Tailwind
theme.extend block for tailwind.config.js
CSS variables
:root { --bg, --text, --brand, … } you can paste anywhere
DTCG JSON
W3C Design Tokens Community Group format
Figma Variables
Importable into Figma → Variables → Import
---
name: IBM
tagline: Carbon Design System made literal — pure-white canvas, IBM Plex Sans at light 300, square corners, and one assertive `#0f62fe` blue.
author: webdesignhot
source_url: https://www.ibm.com
spec: design.md/v1.5
quality: curated
featured: false
categories: [media, dev-tools]
tags: [enterprise, light, sans, square, carbon, dense, technical]
preview_swatch: ['#ffffff', '#0f62fe', '#161616']
related: [hashicorp, datadog, github]
description: 'IBM''s marketing site is a faithful application of the open-source **Carbon Design System** — pure white surfaces, charcoal `#161616` ink, IBM Plex Sans across the entire hierarchy, and a single assertive `#0f62fe` IBM Blue carrying every primary CTA, link, and full-bleed CTA banner. The defining choice is flat geometry: every button, card, input, and container uses square 0px corners with thin 1px hairlines, no rounded pills, no soft shadows, no atmospheric gradients. Display sizes (76 / 60 / 42px) run at weight **300** — IBM''s signature light-display treatment that makes a 76px headline feel calmer than competing brands'' 700-weight display. Body sits at 16px with `letter-spacing: 0.16px` (a Carbon precision detail) and a 4px-grid spacing system. The footer inverts to charcoal `#161616` — the only dark surface above the page break. The result is enterprise gravitas without enterprise stiffness: rigorous, light-weighted, intentionally restrained.'
colors:
bg: '#ffffff' # canvas — Carbon's $background
surface: '#ffffff' # cards inherit canvas
surface-soft: '#f4f4f4' # $background-alt — alternate-row stripes, input fields
surface-strong: '#e0e0e0' # $background-active — disabled fields, separator fill
surface-dark: '#161616' # $background-inverse — footer ground
surface-dark-elev: '#262626' # $background-inverse-hover — footer column dividers
text: '#161616' # $text-primary — every headline, body emphasis
text-strong: '#161616'
text-body: '#161616' # body retains primary ink (Carbon doesn't dim body)
text-muted: '#525252' # $text-secondary — sub-headlines, footer body
text-soft: '#8c8c8c' # $text-helper — disabled, captions
text-on-dark: '#ffffff' # $text-on-color
text-on-dark-mute: '#c6c6c6' # footer body on charcoal
brand: '#0f62fe' # $interactive-01 — IBM Blue 60
brand-hover: '#0050e6' # observed primary button hover
brand-active: '#002d9c' # $interactive-01 pressed — IBM Blue 80
brand-deep: '#0043ce' # IBM Blue 70 — link hover
on-brand: '#ffffff'
border: '#e0e0e0' # $ui-03 — default 1px hairline
border-strong: '#161616' # $ui-05 — focused-input bottom rule, ribbon edge
border-on-dark: '#5e5e5e' # footer column rules
link: '#0f62fe'
link-hover: '#0043ce'
focus: '#0f62fe' # 2px outline, also doubles as input focus underline
scrim: 'rgba(0,0,0,0.5)' # modal backdrop
success: '#24a148' # Carbon green-50
success-soft: '#defbe6' # green-10 — success surface
warning: '#f1c21b' # Carbon yellow-30
warning-soft: '#fcf4d6' # yellow-10
danger: '#da1e28' # Carbon red-60 — error states
danger-soft: '#fff1f1' # red-10
info: '#0f62fe' # info badge — identical to brand
info-soft: '#edf5ff' # blue-10
cool-gray-bg: '#f2f4f8' # cool-gray-10 — alternate hero band
hero-blue-tint: '#e8eaff' # faint blue wash behind hero illustrations
typography:
display:
family: '"IBM Plex Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif'
weights: [300, 400, 600, 700]
opentype-features: []
body:
family: '"IBM Plex Sans", "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif'
weights: [400, 600]
serif:
family: '"IBM Plex Serif", Georgia, serif'
weights: [400]
mono:
family: '"IBM Plex Mono", "SF Mono", Menlo, monospace'
weights: [400]
scale:
display-xl: { size: 76, weight: 300, lineHeight: 1.17, tracking: '-0.5px', family: display }
display-lg: { size: 60, weight: 300, lineHeight: 1.17, tracking: '-0.4px', family: display }
display-md: { size: 42, weight: 300, lineHeight: 1.20, tracking: '0', family: display }
headline: { size: 32, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.25, tracking: '0', family: display }
card-title: { size: 24, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.33, tracking: '0', family: display }
subhead: { size: 20, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.40, tracking: '0', family: display }
body-lg: { size: 18, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.50, tracking: '0', family: body }
body: { size: 16, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.50, tracking: '0.16px', family: body }
body-sm: { size: 14, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.29, tracking: '0.16px', family: body }
body-emphasis: { size: 14, weight: 600, lineHeight: 1.29, tracking: '0.16px', family: body }
caption: { size: 12, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.33, tracking: '0.32px', family: body }
button: { size: 14, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.29, tracking: '0.16px', family: body }
eyebrow: { size: 14, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.29, tracking: '0.16px', family: body }
link: { size: 16, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.50, tracking: '0.16px', family: body }
nav-link: { size: 14, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.29, tracking: '0.16px', family: body }
code: { size: 14, weight: 400, lineHeight: 1.50, tracking: '0', family: mono }
radius:
none: 0 # default for every interactive surface
micro: 2 # rare exception on small badges
sm: 4 # avatar squares, dropdown menus (rare)
md: 6 # documented for completeness — almost never used
lg: 8 # documented for completeness — almost never used
pill: 9999 # status pills inside product UI (rare on marketing)
spacing:
base: 4
scale: [4, 8, 12, 16, 24, 32, 48, 64, 96]
layout:
page-width: 1584 # Carbon max grid
prose-width: 672
header-height: 48
utility-bar-height: 32
components:
button-primary:
bg: '#0f62fe'
color: '#ffffff'
radius: 0
padding: '12px 16px'
font: button
use: 'Default primary CTA across every page. "Try free", "Get started", "Contact sales".'
button-primary-hover:
bg: '#0050e6'
color: '#ffffff'
radius: 0
use: 'Pointer-over state — single notch lighter than brand.'
button-primary-pressed:
bg: '#002d9c'
color: '#ffffff'
radius: 0
use: 'Pointer-down state — IBM Blue 80.'
button-secondary:
bg: '#161616'
color: '#ffffff'
radius: 0
padding: '12px 16px'
use: 'Carbon "secondary" — charcoal solid. Paired with primary for two-action flows.'
button-tertiary:
bg: '#ffffff'
color: '#0f62fe'
border: '1px solid #0f62fe'
radius: 0
padding: '12px 16px'
use: 'Outlined blue button — tertiary CTA on light surfaces.'
button-ghost:
bg: 'transparent'
color: '#0f62fe'
radius: 0
padding: '12px 16px'
use: 'Inline link-style button with right chevron arrow. "Learn more →".'
button-danger:
bg: '#da1e28'
color: '#ffffff'
radius: 0
padding: '12px 16px'
use: 'Destructive confirmation — Carbon red-60.'
feature-card:
bg: '#ffffff'
color: '#161616'
border: '1px solid #e0e0e0'
radius: 0
padding: '24px'
use: 'Default feature highlight tile. Hairline border, square corners, no shadow.'
feature-card-elevated:
bg: '#f4f4f4'
color: '#161616'
radius: 0
padding: '24px'
use: '"Recommended" cards in latest-content carousels — surface-soft variant.'
product-card:
bg: '#ffffff'
color: '#161616'
border: '1px solid #e0e0e0'
radius: 0
padding: '32px'
use: 'Larger product showcase tile.'
hero-card:
bg: '#ffffff'
color: '#161616'
radius: 0
padding: '48px'
font: display-md
use: 'Hero composition card with light-weight title, body, primary CTA.'
cta-banner:
bg: '#0f62fe'
color: '#ffffff'
radius: 0
padding: '48px'
font: headline
use: 'Full-width blue CTA panel near the bottom of major pages.'
text-input:
bg: '#f4f4f4'
color: '#161616'
radius: 0
padding: '11px 16px'
border-bottom: '1px solid #161616'
use: 'Carbon input — surface-soft fill, single bottom rule.'
text-input-focused:
bg: '#f4f4f4'
color: '#161616'
radius: 0
border-bottom: '2px solid #0f62fe'
use: 'Focused state replaces the 1px charcoal rule with a 2px IBM Blue rule.'
text-input-error:
bg: '#f4f4f4'
color: '#161616'
radius: 0
border-bottom: '2px solid #da1e28'
use: 'Validation error — 2px red-60 bottom rule.'
product-tab:
bg: '#ffffff'
color: '#525252'
radius: 0
padding: '16px 20px'
border-bottom: '1px solid #e0e0e0'
use: 'Inactive tab in horizontal strip.'
product-tab-selected:
bg: '#ffffff'
color: '#161616'
radius: 0
padding: '16px 20px'
border-bottom: '2px solid #0f62fe'
font: body-emphasis
use: 'Active tab — body-emphasis weight + 2px IBM Blue rule.'
resource-tile:
bg: '#ffffff'
color: '#161616'
border: '1px solid #e0e0e0'
radius: 0
padding: '16px'
use: 'Smaller article / case-study tile in resource grids.'
customer-logo-tile:
bg: '#ffffff'
color: '#525252'
border: '1px solid #e0e0e0'
radius: 0
padding: '24px'
use: 'Single tile in the customer-logo marquee. Caption-sized type below logo.'
utility-bar:
bg: '#f4f4f4'
color: '#525252'
radius: 0
height: 32
font: caption
use: 'Slim gray ribbon above primary nav with locale, contact, search shortcuts.'
top-nav:
bg: '#ffffff'
color: '#161616'
radius: 0
height: 48
border-bottom: '1px solid #e0e0e0'
font: nav-link
use: 'Sticky white bar — IBM 8-bar logomark left, nav center, search/sign-in icons right.'
footer:
bg: '#161616'
color: '#c6c6c6'
radius: 0
padding: '64px 32px'
use: 'Charcoal footer. Wordmark left, 5–6 columns of caption-sized links. Only inverted surface above the page break.'
motion:
ease-standard: 'cubic-bezier(0.2, 0, 0.38, 0.9)' # Carbon's productive easing
ease-emphasized: 'cubic-bezier(0.4, 0.14, 0.3, 1)' # Carbon's expressive easing
ease-entrance: 'cubic-bezier(0, 0, 0.38, 0.9)'
ease-exit: 'cubic-bezier(0.2, 0, 1, 0.9)'
duration-fast: 110 # micro-state hover
duration-standard: 240 # standard transitions
duration-slow: 400 # large surface entrances
button-hover: 'background swap from #0f62fe → #0050e6 in 110ms'
card-hover: 'no transform — surface tone subtly shifts to #f4f4f4 in 110ms'
modal-enter: 'scrim fades 240ms + dialog slides 8px → 0 with ease-emphasized'
reduced-motion: 'respects prefers-reduced-motion: reduce — all transitions to opacity-only.'
breakpoints:
small: 320 # Carbon "sm"
medium: 672 # Carbon "md"
large: 1056 # Carbon "lg"
x-large: 1312 # Carbon "xlg"
max: 1584 # Carbon "max"
shadows:
none: 'none' # default — Carbon resists shadows on marketing
ambient: '0 0 0 1px #e0e0e0' # the 1px hairline doubles as elevation
hover-tile: 'rgba(0,0,0,0.04) 0 2px 6px 0' # rare card hover lift
modal: 'rgba(0,0,0,0.18) 0 8px 28px' # dialog elevation
ring: '0 0 0 2px #0f62fe' # focus ring (Carbon focus token)
accessibility:
contrast-text-on-bg: 16.0 # #161616 on #ffffff — AAA at body
contrast-text-on-brand: 4.5 # #ffffff on #0f62fe — AA at body, AAA at large
contrast-muted-on-bg: 7.6 # #525252 on #ffffff — AAA
focus-ring: '2px solid #0f62fe + 1px additional hairline-strong inner outline (Carbon focus stack)'
reduced-motion-honored: true
touch-target-min: 48 # primary CTAs and inputs hold 48px on touch
keyboard-nav: 'Tab order: utility-bar → top-nav → hero CTA → feature card grid → footer columns. Carbon focus ring visible on every interactive element.'
dark-mode: optional # Carbon ships a Gray-100 dark theme for product surfaces, but the marketing site is light-only above the footer. Footer is always charcoal regardless of theme.
---
## 1. Visual Theme & Atmosphere
IBM's marketing chrome is a faithful, unembellished application of **Carbon Design System** — IBM's open-source enterprise design language. The dominant surface is pure white (`#ffffff`) with `#f4f4f4` light gray for elevation, charcoal `#161616` for text, and a single confident IBM Blue (`#0f62fe`) for primary action. The system reads as engineering documentation that learned graphic design — every page is a structured cascade of dense, factual content arranged on a 4-pixel grid.
The defining choice is **flat geometry**. Every CTA, every card, every input, every container uses square 0px corners with thin 1px borders. There are no rounded pills, no soft shadows, no atmospheric gradients. Where consumer brands soften corners and pile on elevation, IBM doubles down on the rule and the rectangle. The system is engineered, not stylized — and it relies on that discipline as its visual identity.
**IBM Plex Sans** carries the entire type hierarchy. Display sizes (76 / 60 / 42px) run at weight **300** — IBM's signature light-display treatment that makes 76px feel calmer and more authoritative than the same size at 700 would. Body sits at weight 400 with the precise `letter-spacing: 0.16px` that Carbon documents — a small positive tracking detail that distinguishes IBM body copy from any default browser sans. The voice reads as careful, technical, and trustworthy.
The system reaches for color rarely. IBM Blue marks links, primary CTAs, focus rules, and the rare full-bleed CTA banner. Charcoal carries every surface that isn't white. The footer is the only inversion above the page break — a single charcoal block that anchors every page with the same global navigation, the same legal row, the same restrained voice.
**Key Characteristics:**
- Carbon Design System made literal — IBM's marketing chrome IS Carbon.
- Square 0px corners on every button, card, input, and container.
- IBM Plex Sans at weight 300 for display sizes (42–76px) — the brand's typographic signature.
- Single accent: `#0f62fe` IBM Blue carries every link, primary CTA, and CTA banner. There is no second brand color.
- White canvas (`#ffffff`) + light gray (`#f4f4f4`) + charcoal (`#161616`) cover 95% of surfaces.
- Footer inverts to charcoal `#161616` — the only dark surface above the page break.
- Card hierarchy is carried by 1px hairlines and surface change, never by drop shadow.
- `letter-spacing: 0.16px` on body is a Carbon precision detail — the small positive tracking is part of the brand voice.
- Page rhythm: utility bar → top nav → hero with light-weight headline → feature card grid → customer logo marquee → enterprise feature row → newsletter / sign-in CTA → dark footer.
## 2. Color Palette & Roles
### Primary
- **Canvas** (`#ffffff`): The default page floor on every public marketing page. IBM has no public marketing dark mode above the footer.
- **Ink** (`#161616`): The dominant text colour. Display headlines, body, primary nav links. Never pure black — Carbon's slightly softened ink reads warmer at large sizes.
- **IBM Blue** (`#0f62fe` / Carbon `$interactive-01` / Blue 60): The single brand voltage. Every primary CTA, every inline link, every CTA banner background.
### Brand & Dark
- **IBM Blue Hover** (`#0050e6`): Hover state for primary buttons — a single notch lighter than brand.
- **IBM Blue Active** (`#002d9c` / Blue 80): Pressed primary button state.
- **IBM Blue Deep** (`#0043ce` / Blue 70): Hovered link state on body type.
- **Surface Dark** (`#161616` / `$background-inverse`): The footer ground. The only inverted surface above the page break.
- **Surface Dark Elev** (`#262626`): One step lighter than the inverse canvas — used for footer column dividers and hovered footer items.
### Accent
- **Hero Blue Tint** (`#e8eaff`): A faint blue-to-white wash that occasionally appears behind hero illustrations. The only "decorative" colour in the system; never used as a card or CTA surface.
- **Cool Gray BG** (`#f2f4f8` / cool-gray-10): Alternate hero band on certain product pages. A cooler-tinted off-white that distinguishes from `#f4f4f4`'s neutral gray.
### Interactive
- **Link** (`#0f62fe`): Default inline link colour — identical to brand.
- **Link Hover** (`#0043ce` / Blue 70): Hovered link, with underline thickening.
- **Focus** (`#0f62fe`): The 2px outline used on every focused interactive element.
- **Disabled** (`#8c8c8c` text on `#e0e0e0` surface for disabled fields).
### Neutral Scale
- **Ink** (`#161616`) — display headlines, body
- **Text Muted** (`#525252` / `$text-secondary`) — sub-headlines, footer body, breadcrumb
- **Text Soft** (`#8c8c8c` / `$text-helper`) — disabled, helper text, captions
- **Surface Soft** (`#f4f4f4` / `$background-alt`) — input fields, alternate-row stripes, subtle section bands
- **Surface Strong** (`#e0e0e0` / `$background-active`) — disabled fields, separator fill
- **Border** (`#e0e0e0` / `$ui-03`) — 1px borders on cards, inputs, dividers
- **Border Strong** (`#161616` / `$ui-05`) — 1px charcoal underline on focused inputs (Carbon's signature focus treatment)
### Surface & Borders
- **Canvas** (`#ffffff`) — page floor
- **Surface Soft** (`#f4f4f4`) — alternate band, input fill
- **Surface Strong** (`#e0e0e0`) — disabled state
- **Surface Dark** (`#161616`) — footer ground
- **Border** (`#e0e0e0`) — default 1px hairline tone (every card, every input bottom rule)
- **Border Strong** (`#161616`) — input bottom rule, ribbon edge
- **Border On Dark** (`#5e5e5e`) — footer column separators
### Shadow Colors
Carbon resists drop shadows on marketing entirely. The only documented shadows on the marketing surface are the modal scrim (`rgba(0,0,0,0.5)` ground) and a 2px focus ring outline (`#0f62fe`). Cards use 1px hairlines and surface change for hierarchy, never elevation.
### Semantic
- **Success** (`#24a148` on `#defbe6`) — green-50 / green-10 — confirmation states
- **Warning** (`#f1c21b` on `#fcf4d6`) — yellow-30 / yellow-10 — advisory banners
- **Danger** (`#da1e28` on `#fff1f1`) — red-60 / red-10 — error states, danger button background
- **Info** (`#0f62fe` on `#edf5ff`) — identical to brand / blue-10 — informational badges
## 3. Typography Rules
### Font Family
**Primary**: `IBM Plex Sans`. Fallback chain: `"Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif`. IBM Plex Sans is IBM's open-source proprietary typeface, free for any use under the SIL Open Font License — making it the easiest "custom" face on this list to substitute for in implementation. Geometric, slightly humanist, designed specifically for enterprise UI. Plex Sans is a true single-family hierarchy: display, body, and caption all carry the same face, with hierarchy built from size and weight rather than family change.
**Companions**: `IBM Plex Serif` and `IBM Plex Mono` exist in the Plex family but rarely surface on marketing — the serif is reserved for editorial long-form (case studies on rare deep-dive pages) and the mono lives inside product / docs surfaces. Marketing chrome stays on Plex Sans.
**OpenType features**: Carbon doesn't aggressively use OpenType features on marketing — no `ss01`, no `tnum`, no decorative alternates. The face is used as-shipped, with the precise `letter-spacing: 0.16px` on body sizes being the one mandatory typographic detail.
### Hierarchy
| Role | Font | Size | Weight | Line Height | Letter Spacing | OT Features | Notes |
|------|------|------|--------|-------------|----------------|-------------|-------|
| display-xl | Plex Sans | 76 | 300 | 1.17 | -0.5px | — | Largest hero headline — light weight is the brand signature |
| display-lg | Plex Sans | 60 | 300 | 1.17 | -0.4px | — | Section opener headlines |
| display-md | Plex Sans | 42 | 300 | 1.20 | 0 | — | Sub-section headlines, hero card title |
| headline | Plex Sans | 32 | 400 | 1.25 | 0 | — | Card collection heading, FAQ category |
| card-title | Plex Sans | 24 | 400 | 1.33 | 0 | — | Feature card title |
| subhead | Plex Sans | 20 | 400 | 1.40 | 0 | — | Lead body next to display headlines |
| body-lg | Plex Sans | 18 | 400 | 1.50 | 0 | — | Hero subhead, lead paragraph |
| body | Plex Sans | 16 | 400 | 1.50 | 0.16px | — | Default body — Carbon precision tracking required |
| body-sm | Plex Sans | 14 | 400 | 1.29 | 0.16px | — | Card body, footer column body |
| body-emphasis | Plex Sans | 14 | 600 | 1.29 | 0.16px | — | Selected tab label, emphasized line |
| caption | Plex Sans | 12 | 400 | 1.33 | 0.32px | — | Captions, meta, utility bar |
| button | Plex Sans | 14 | 400 | 1.29 | 0.16px | — | Every button label across the system |
| eyebrow | Plex Sans | 14 | 400 | 1.29 | 0.16px | — | Sentence-case eyebrows (Carbon avoids tracked all-caps) |
| link | Plex Sans | 16 | 400 | 1.50 | 0.16px | — | Inline body link, blue underlined |
| nav-link | Plex Sans | 14 | 400 | 1.29 | 0.16px | — | Top-nav category labels |
| code | Plex Mono | 14 | 400 | 1.50 | 0 | — | Rare code-snippet inline (mostly product surface) |
### Principles
- **Light-weight display is the brand voice.** Plex Sans at weight 300 for 76px headlines reads as quietly authoritative — switching to weight 700 would make IBM look like every other enterprise site. The contrast between display 300 and body 400 is what gives the brand its calm.
- **Carbon's `letter-spacing: 0.16px`** on body sizes is a precision detail. It is part of the typographic voice — never remove it, even when migrating to Inter or Helvetica.
- **No mono on marketing.** Plex Mono exists but lives in product / docs surfaces only. Marketing chrome stays on Plex Sans across every text role.
- **Eyebrow typography uses sentence case 14px** — Carbon resists the all-caps tracked eyebrow common to other enterprise brands. If the design feels like it needs an all-caps eyebrow, pause: that's drift away from Carbon.
- **Hierarchy by weight + size, never by colour.** Body stays `#161616` regardless of section context. The system never tints body type to suggest hierarchy.
- **Line-heights tighten on display, relax on body** — 1.17 at 76px, 1.50 at 16px. Proportional to size.
- **Plex Sans is open-source** under SIL OFL. There is no excuse for shipping a different fallback face when implementing — Google Fonts hosts it directly.
## 4. Component Stylings
### Buttons
**`button-primary`** — IBM Blue solid CTA. The default primary across all pages. Background `#0f62fe`, text `#ffffff`, type `button` (14/400/0.16px), padding `12px 16px`, radius `0`. Hover background flips to `#0050e6`, pressed flips to `#002d9c` — both at 110ms. No transform, no shadow, no border. The square corner is the brand.
**`button-secondary`** — Charcoal solid button — Carbon's secondary treatment. Background `#161616`, text `#ffffff`, same padding, same square corners. Used as the second-tier action paired with primary.
**`button-tertiary`** — White button with a 1px IBM Blue border and IBM Blue text. Used for tertiary CTAs that still need a visible affordance.
**`button-ghost`** — Plain text + chevron arrow, no background, no border. IBM Blue text. Used for "Learn more →" links inside feature blocks.
**`button-danger`** — Carbon's destructive variant. Background `#da1e28` (red-60), text `#ffffff`, otherwise identical structure to `button-primary`.
### Cards
**`feature-card`** — Default feature highlight tile. Background `#ffffff`, text `#161616`, body type, square corners, 24px padding. Stroked with 1px `#e0e0e0`. No shadow, no hover lift — the surface tone subtly shifts to `#f4f4f4` on hover (110ms).
**`feature-card-elevated`** — Same shape on `#f4f4f4` ground. Used for "Recommended" cards in the latest-content carousel.
**`product-card`** — Larger product showcase tile. 32px padding, otherwise identical chrome to feature-card.
**`hero-card`** — Hero composition card. Light-weight `display-md` (42/300) title, body-lg subhead, primary CTA. 48px padding, square corners.
**`cta-banner`** — Full-width IBM Blue CTA panel near the bottom of major pages. Background `#0f62fe`, text `#ffffff`, headline type, 48px padding, square corners. The single largest expanse of brand colour in the system.
**`resource-tile`** — Smaller article / case-study tile. 16px padding, body-sm type. Used inside resource grids on product pages.
**`customer-logo-tile`** — Single tile in the customer-logo marquee on the home page. 1px hairline, 24px padding, caption-sized type below the logo (e.g., "Pfizer", "Ferrari", "Citi").
### Badges, Tags, Pills
Carbon documents pill-shaped badges for product UI but rarely surfaces them on marketing. When they appear, they sit at `radius: 9999` with caption-sized type, surface-soft fill, 4px×10px padding. The marketing system prefers tagging via square-cornered chips matched to the rest of the chrome — Carbon's resistance to the rounded badge is part of its identity.
### Inputs / Forms
**`text-input`** — Carbon's distinctive input chrome. Background `#f4f4f4` (surface-soft), text `#161616`, body type, padding `11px 16px`, square corners. The defining detail: a single 1px `#161616` bottom rule (no top, no left, no right border).
**`text-input-focused`** — The focused state replaces the bottom 1px charcoal rule with a 2px IBM Blue rule. No glow, no ring around the input — just the underline that changes. This is Carbon's signature focus treatment and it is unmistakable.
**`text-input-error`** — Adds a 2px `#da1e28` bottom rule with a small validation message in caption type below.
**`newsletter-input`** — The "Stay connected" newsletter capture on the home page. Identical chrome to `text-input` with an adjacent `button-primary` submit.
### Tabs
**`product-tab`** + **`product-tab-selected`** — The horizontal tab strip on product pages and the home "Recommended" carousel. Default: white background, `#525252` text, square corners, 16px×20px padding, 1px `#e0e0e0` bottom hairline. Selected: white background, `#161616` text, body-emphasis weight (14/600), 2px `#0f62fe` bottom underline. Same padding, same square corners.
### Navigation
**`top-nav`** — Sticky white bar 48px tall. IBM 8-bar logomark left, nav categories center (Products / Solutions / Industries / Resources / Support), search and sign-in icons right. 1px `#e0e0e0` bottom hairline.
**`utility-bar`** — Slim gray ribbon 32px tall above the top nav with location switch, contact, search shortcuts. Background `#f4f4f4`, caption-sized type in muted ink. Hides below 672px to reclaim vertical space.
### Footer
**`footer`** — Charcoal footer (`#161616`) with the IBM wordmark left and 5–6 columns of caption-sized links. The only inverted surface above the page break. Column heads in body-sm/600 white, link lists in body-sm/400 `#c6c6c6`. Padding 64px×32px. Below the columns: social-icon strip, locale selector, legal/privacy fine-print row.
### Decorative
There are no decorative chrome components in IBM's marketing system. The hero may receive a faint blue-to-white gradient backdrop (`#e8eaff` → `#ffffff`) behind illustrations, but this is the only "decorative" element on the page — and it is rare. Photography and illustration carry visual interest; the chrome stays disciplined.
## 5. Layout Principles
### Spacing System
- **Base unit**: 4px — Carbon's signature 4-pixel grid.
- **Scale**: `4 · 8 · 12 · 16 · 24 · 32 · 48 · 64 · 96`
- Card interior padding: 24px on feature cards, 32px on product cards, 48px on hero cards and CTA banners.
- Button padding: 12px vertical, 16px horizontal — Carbon spec.
- Form input padding: 11px vertical, 16px horizontal.
- Section padding: 96px vertical between major page bands on desktop, 48px on mobile.
### Grid & Container
- Carbon's 16-column grid at desktop, scaling to 8 / 4 columns at tablet / mobile.
- Max content width: 1584px (Carbon's max-grid breakpoint).
- Card grids: 4-up at desktop, 2-up at tablet, 1-up at mobile.
- The customer-logo marquee uses fixed-width tiles in a flex row, scrolling horizontally on smaller viewports.
### Whitespace Philosophy
Carbon uses precise alignment to a 4-pixel grid as its whitespace system. Sections separate via thin gray rows (`#f4f4f4`) rather than via large vertical gaps. Content is dense by design — IBM's customers expect to see a lot on a page, not a lot of air. The system trusts the grid to do the work that other brands ask drop shadows and gradients to do.
### Section Cadence
White → surface-soft → white. The `#f4f4f4` band is the only alternation IBM allows on the body of the page. Charcoal is reserved exclusively for the footer; the cool-gray-tinted `#f2f4f8` shows up rarely on certain product pages as a subtle hero band.
## 6. Shapes & Radius Scale
| Tier | Value | Use |
|------|-------|-----|
| None | 0px | Default — every button, card, input, container |
| Micro | 2px | Small badges (rare exception inside dense product UI) |
| Small | 4px | Avatar squares, dropdown menus (rare on marketing) |
| Medium | 6px | Documented for completeness; almost never used |
| Large | 8px | Documented for completeness; almost never used |
| Pill | 9999px | Status pills inside product UI (rare on marketing) |
The brand commits to flat 0px corners. The other tokens exist for product / mobile / docs surfaces but rarely appear on marketing. There are no compound radii on IBM — every interactive element is rectangular on all four corners.
## 7. Depth & Elevation
| Level | Treatment | Use |
|-------|-----------|-----|
| 0 — Flat | No shadow, no border | Hero text, body type, footer body — most surfaces |
| 1 — Hairline | 1px `#e0e0e0` border on canvas | Feature cards, inputs, list items |
| 2 — Surface lift | `#f4f4f4` background on canvas | Alternate-row banners, hovered cards |
| 3 — Surface dark | `#161616` background | Footer; rare inverted CTA strip |
| 4 — Focus ring | 2px `#0f62fe` outline + 1px hairline-strong stack | Focused input, focused button |
| 5 — Modal | `rgba(0,0,0,0.18) 0 8px 28px` on dialog over scrim | Centered dialogs (sign-in, language, support) |
### Shadow Philosophy
IBM resists drop shadows on marketing entirely. Depth is carried by surface change and 1px hairlines. The exception is product / app surfaces (Carbon documents shadow tokens for elevated panels), but the marketing site barely uses them. The single-tier hover lift on cards is a tone shift (`#ffffff` → `#f4f4f4`), not a transform or a shadow.
## 8. Interaction & Motion
### Easing
- **Standard productive**: `cubic-bezier(0.2, 0, 0.38, 0.9)` — the default for hover swaps, hairline transitions, surface tone shifts. Carbon's documented "productive" curve.
- **Expressive**: `cubic-bezier(0.4, 0.14, 0.3, 1)` — modal entry, drawer slides, large surface entrances.
- **Entrance**: `cubic-bezier(0, 0, 0.38, 0.9)` — element enters viewport from below.
- **Exit**: `cubic-bezier(0.2, 0, 1, 0.9)` — element leaves viewport.
### Durations
| Bucket | Value | Use |
|--------|-------|-----|
| Fast | 110ms | Button background swap on hover, hairline transitions |
| Standard | 240ms | Card surface tone shift, modal scrim fade |
| Slow | 400ms | Drawer slide, large surface entrance |
### Per-Component Micro-States
- **Button hover**: background swap from `#0f62fe` → `#0050e6` in 110ms, no transform, no scale.
- **Card hover**: surface tone shifts from `#ffffff` → `#f4f4f4` in 110ms — no lift, no shadow intensify.
- **Input focus**: bottom rule transitions from 1px `#161616` → 2px `#0f62fe` in 110ms.
- **Tab selection**: bottom underline transitions from 1px `#e0e0e0` → 2px `#0f62fe` in 110ms; label weight steps 400 → 600.
- **Modal enter**: scrim fades over 240ms (ease-standard) + dialog slides 8px → 0 with `ease-emphasized`.
### Page Transitions
Carbon doesn't ship page transitions on the marketing surface. Pages load instantly with no fade-in, no slide-in chrome. The only "transition" between pages is the persistent top-nav and utility-bar that don't animate — they just stay put across navigation events.
### Reduced Motion
The system respects `prefers-reduced-motion: reduce`. All transforms (the rare 8px modal slide, the chevron rotation on accordions) are suppressed; transitions reduce to opacity-only. Background colour swaps remain because they don't constitute motion, and they are essential to interaction feedback.
## 9. Accessibility & A11y
### Contrast Pairs
- **Text on canvas**: `#161616` on `#ffffff` — 16.0:1 (AAA at body, AAA at large)
- **Text on brand**: `#ffffff` on `#0f62fe` — 4.5:1 (AA at body, AAA at large)
- **Muted on canvas**: `#525252` on `#ffffff` — 7.6:1 (AAA)
- **Helper on canvas**: `#8c8c8c` on `#ffffff` — 4.0:1 (AA at large only — Carbon avoids using helper on plain canvas for body)
- **Inverse text on dark**: `#ffffff` on `#161616` — 16.0:1 (AAA)
- **Inverse muted on dark**: `#c6c6c6` on `#161616` — 9.8:1 (AAA)
### Focus Indicators
Carbon's focus stack is unmistakable: a 2px `#0f62fe` outline with a 1px `#161616` inner outline beneath. Together they create a thicker, higher-contrast ring than the default browser focus. Inputs additionally show their focused state via the 2px IBM Blue bottom rule.
### ARIA Patterns
- **Dialogs**: `role="dialog"` with `aria-modal="true"`, focus trap, `aria-labelledby` on the dialog title. Esc closes; Tab cycles within the dialog.
- **Tabs**: Standard `role="tablist"` / `role="tab"` / `role="tabpanel"` pattern with arrow-key navigation between tabs. Selected tab carries `aria-selected="true"`.
- **Disclosure / Accordion**: `aria-expanded` on the trigger, `aria-controls` pointing to the panel id.
- **Inline links**: regular `<a>` with no extra ARIA — link text must be self-describing (Carbon discourages "click here").
### Keyboard Navigation
Tab order: utility-bar → top-nav (logomark, nav categories, search, sign-in) → main content (hero CTA → feature cards in row order) → footer columns. Skip link to `#main-content` is the first focusable element on the page (Carbon documents this; some marketing pages omit it — derivative work should include).
### Screen Reader Hints
Carbon prefers visible, self-describing labels over `aria-label`. When `aria-label` is necessary (icon-only buttons, search), the label matches the visible tooltip text. Decorative SVGs receive `aria-hidden="true"`.
### Reduced Motion
`prefers-reduced-motion: reduce` is honored. All transform-based motion (modal slides, accordion chevrons, hover scales) is suppressed; only opacity remains.
## 10. Responsive Behavior
### Breakpoints
| Name | Width | Key Changes |
|------|-------|-------------|
| Small | 320px | Single-column; display-xl scales 76px → ~32px; nav becomes hamburger |
| Medium | 672px | Card grid 4-up → 2-up; utility bar hides |
| Large | 1056px | Card grid 4-up restored; sub-nav becomes horizontal |
| X-Large | 1312px | Default desktop layout |
| Max | 1584px | Carbon max grid; outer gutters expand to ~80px |
### Touch Targets
Carbon spec: 48px minimum tap target. Buttons and inputs hold 48px on touch viewports (versus the documented 40-44px tab desktop height). Top-nav links grow from 36px to 48px tap height on touch. Tab strip rows hold 48px tap height. Footer links pad to 48px row height.
### Collapsing Strategy
- **Top nav**: links collapse to a hamburger overlay below 672px. Logomark and search icon stay on the bar.
- **Utility bar**: hides below 672px.
- **Card grid**: 4-up → 2-up at 1056px → 1-up below 672px.
- **Display type**: `display-xl` 76px scales toward 42px on mobile while preserving the weight-300 treatment. Line-height holds at 1.17.
- **Footer**: 6-column link grid → 3-column at tablet → 1-column at mobile (each column header becomes a tap-to-expand row).
- **Hero illustration**: scales proportionally; below 672px illustrations may stack above the headline rather than sit beside it.
### Image Behavior
Customer logos in the marquee maintain aspect ratio and may collapse to 2-row scroll below 672px. Hero photographs use art-direction crops on mobile (16:9 wide → 4:5 portrait) so the subject stays centered when the layout collapses to single-column.
### Container Queries
Carbon doesn't aggressively use container queries on marketing — most responsive logic lives at the document breakpoint level. Internal product surfaces (data tables, breadcrumbs) use container queries to respond to panel width independent of viewport.
## 11. Content & Voice
### Tone
IBM's marketing voice is **technical, careful, and trustworthy** — never playful, never breathless. Headlines lean factual ("Bring AI to your data", "Empower the workforce of tomorrow") rather than aspirational ("Imagine a world where..."). The voice borrows from engineering documentation: precise nouns, active verbs, no jargon outside the domain.
### Microcopy Patterns
- **Button verbs**: "Try free", "Get started", "Contact sales", "Learn more", "Read the case study", "Watch the video". Action-first, sentence-case.
- **Error messages**: stated plainly. "Please enter a valid email address." Carbon discourages cute or apologetic error copy.
- **Success confirmations**: brief and factual. "Email sent." "Subscription confirmed."
- **Loading states**: "Loading..." in body-sm muted. No spinners on marketing where they aren't required.
### Empty States
IBM marketing doesn't expose many empty states (most marketing surfaces are populated). Where they appear (resource search results), the copy is direct: "No results found. Try a different search term." A single ghost button to "Reset filters" appears below.
### CTA Verb Conventions
- "Try free" — always paired with a tertiary "Contact sales" for enterprise leads.
- "Get started" — used for product trials and self-serve sign-ups.
- "Contact sales" — IBM's preferred enterprise lead-gen phrasing over "Request a demo".
- "Learn more" — only as a tertiary affordance with a chevron arrow ("Learn more →"). Never as primary copy.
- "Read the case study", "Watch the video" — content-action verbs that match the asset type.
The system rejects "Click here", "Sign up now", "Buy now" — those phrasings read as marketing-by-default, not as IBM's voice.
## 12. Dark Mode & Theming
IBM's public marketing pages are **light-only above the footer**. Carbon ships a complete Gray-100 dark theme for product surfaces — same component anatomy, inverted token map (charcoal canvas, off-white ink, IBM Blue 50 for action). That dark theme is documented in the Carbon design system but is not exposed on the marketing site.
The footer is always charcoal regardless of theme — this is a constant across light and dark modes. If a derivative work needs to ship a marketing dark theme, the recommended token swap is:
- `bg`: `#ffffff` → `#161616`
- `surface-soft`: `#f4f4f4` → `#262626`
- `text`: `#161616` → `#f4f4f4`
- `text-muted`: `#525252` → `#c6c6c6`
- `border`: `#e0e0e0` → `#393939`
- `brand`: `#0f62fe` → `#4589ff` (Carbon Blue 50 — brighter for dark surfaces)
- `cta-banner` background: `#0f62fe` → `#0353e9` (slightly desaturated for dark canvas)
Plex Sans weight 300 still carries display in dark mode — the light-weight discipline holds across themes.
## 13. Lineage & Influences
IBM's design lineage runs through three distinct eras and one open-source pivot:
**1956–1990: Paul Rand era.** IBM's iconic 8-bar logomark (1956, refined 1972) and the Rand-designed identity system established the brand's commitment to typographic clarity, geometric simplicity, and corporate restraint. Helvetica was the corporate face for decades. The Rand system rejected ornament, embraced grid discipline, and prioritized legibility — every Carbon decision can be traced back to this lineage.
**1990–2010: ThinkPad / business-machine era.** The shift toward enterprise software (DB2, WebSphere, Lotus) introduced denser interfaces and a more conservative typographic voice. The website itself was densely linked, blue-and-white, and served as a reference catalog rather than a marketing surface.
**2014–today: Carbon / Plex era.** IBM commissioned Mike Abbink and Bold Monday to design IBM Plex (2017) — a wholly new corporate face released open-source under SIL OFL. Carbon Design System (open-sourced 2018) codified the marketing chrome around Plex, the 4-pixel grid, square corners, and the IBM Blue voltage. The current marketing site is a faithful Carbon application — every token is documented in the public Carbon repository at `carbondesignsystem.com`.
**Influences absorbed:**
- **Bauhaus / Swiss school** — geometric sans, grid discipline, function-over-ornament. Plex Sans is in this lineage; the 4-pixel grid is its descendant.
- **Helvetica / corporate modernism** — the "international typographic style" that defined enterprise design 1960–2000. IBM was a major patron.
- **Material Design** (Google, 2014) — Carbon shares Material's commitment to a documented, open-source design system, though Carbon rejects Material's elevation/shadow language entirely.
- **Atlassian Design System** — peer enterprise design system; Carbon is more restrained on color and corner radius.
**What it rejects:**
- Atmospheric depth (no gradient backdrops beyond the rare hero blue tint).
- Rounded corners (Carbon explicitly resists the 8px / 12px radii common to consumer SaaS).
- Decorative animation (no parallax, no auto-playing video, no scroll-triggered scale effects).
- All-caps tracked eyebrows (Carbon's eyebrows are sentence-case 14px).
**Named contemporaries:**
- [Carbon Design System](https://carbondesignsystem.com) — the source documentation.
- [IBM Plex](https://github.com/IBM/plex) — the open-source typeface.
- [HashiCorp](https://www.hashicorp.com) — peer enterprise design with similar restraint, more rounded corners.
- [Datadog](https://www.datadoghq.com) — peer enterprise design with more aggressive use of color (purple).
## 14. Do's and Don'ts
### Do
- Use 0px corners on every CTA, card, input, and container. The flat-square aesthetic is the brand.
- Pair Plex Sans weight 300 for display sizes (42px+) with weight 400 for body. Resist the urge to bold the headline.
- Reserve `#0f62fe` IBM Blue for primary CTAs, links, focused-input underlines, and CTA banners. Do not use it as a card background or eyebrow color.
- Apply `letter-spacing: 0.16px` to body sizes. It's a Carbon precision detail and part of the typographic voice.
- Use surface change (`#ffffff` → `#f4f4f4`) and 1px hairlines for card hierarchy. Skip drop shadows.
- Stick to sentence case for eyebrows and section labels — Carbon resists all-caps tracking on marketing.
- Invert to `#161616` only at the footer; the rest of the page stays light.
- Honor the 4-pixel grid for all spacing decisions — `4 · 8 · 12 · 16 · 24 · 32 · 48 · 64 · 96`.
- Use Plex Sans, not Inter or Helvetica, when the typeface choice matters — Plex is open-source and free under SIL OFL.
### Don't
- Don't round corners on buttons, cards, or inputs. Even 4px rounded corners break the Carbon look.
- Don't bold display headlines. Plex Sans at weight 300 is the brand voice; weight 700 makes it look generic.
- Don't add atmospheric depth (gradient backdrops, drop shadows, atmospheric overlays) outside the documented soft-blue hero gradient.
- Don't introduce a second brand color. IBM Blue is the only chromatic accent; status semantics use the documented green / yellow / red.
- Don't replace IBM Plex Sans with Inter or Helvetica without preserving the `letter-spacing: 0.16px` and weight-300 display treatment.
- Don't use pill-shaped buttons. Carbon uses square corners; pills read as a different brand.
- Don't write all-caps tracked eyebrows on marketing surfaces. Carbon's eyebrows are sentence case at 14px.
- Don't use Plex Mono on marketing — it lives in product / docs surfaces only.
- Don't pile up shadows for hover states. The card hover is a tone shift, not an elevation lift.
## 15. Agent Prompt Guide
### Quick Color Reference
- Canvas: `#ffffff`
- Surface Soft: `#f4f4f4`
- Ink: `#161616`
- Text Muted: `#525252`
- IBM Blue: `#0f62fe`
- IBM Blue Hover: `#0050e6`
- IBM Blue Active: `#002d9c`
- Border: `#e0e0e0`
- Footer Ground: `#161616`
- Focus Ring: `#0f62fe`
### Example Component Prompts
- "Create a hero with a 76px IBM Plex Sans display headline at weight 300 and `-0.5px` letter-spacing, an 18px Plex Sans body subhead at weight 400 with `letter-spacing: 0.16px`, and a primary `#0f62fe` CTA with white text, square 0px corners, 12×16px padding, and weight-400 14px button label. No shadow, no gradient, no rounded corners."
- "Design a feature card on `#ffffff` with a 1px `#e0e0e0` hairline border, square 0px corners, 24px padding. Title in 24px Plex Sans / 400, body in 16px Plex Sans / 400 with `0.16px` tracking, and a tertiary 'Learn more →' chevron link in `#0f62fe`. No drop shadow."
- "Build a Carbon text input: `#f4f4f4` background fill, square 0px corners, 11×16px padding, 1px `#161616` bottom rule. On focus, the bottom rule becomes 2px `#0f62fe`. No glow ring, no full border."
- "Create a customer-logo marquee: 4-up flex row of 1px-bordered `#ffffff` tiles, 24px padding, square corners. Each tile holds a logomark and the customer name in 12px Plex Sans / 400 / `0.32px` tracking, muted to `#525252`."
- "Design a CTA banner: full-width `#0f62fe` panel, 48px padding, square corners. White headline at 32px Plex Sans / 400, body in 18px / 400 with `0.16px` tracking, and a white 'Try free' button with the same square 0px corners."
- "Build the footer: full-width `#161616` panel, 64×32px padding, 5–6 columns of caption-sized links. Column heads in 14px Plex Sans / 600 white, link lists in 14px / 400 `#c6c6c6`. The IBM 8-bar logomark anchors the top-left."
### Iteration Guide
1. **Audit corners first.** Every interactive surface should be 0px. If you see 4px or 6px radius anywhere, flatten it — Carbon's brand depends on it.
2. **Audit display weight.** Plex Sans display at 300, body at 400. If any headline above 32px is bolder than 300, drop it back.
3. **Audit body tracking.** `letter-spacing: 0.16px` on every body-size token. Removing it makes the typography read as default-Inter.
4. **Audit color sprawl.** Only `#0f62fe` outside grayscale + semantic. Any orange, purple, or green is drift.
5. **Audit eyebrows.** Sentence case 14px, no all-caps, no positive tracking beyond `0.16px`. If you see "AI SOLUTIONS" instead of "AI solutions", that's drift.
6. **Audit shadows.** Strip every `box-shadow`. If a card needs to feel elevated, change its surface tone (`#ffffff` → `#f4f4f4`) or add a 1px hairline.
7. **Audit spacing.** Every value should be on the 4-pixel grid: `4 · 8 · 12 · 16 · 24 · 32 · 48 · 64 · 96`. Anything else is breaking Carbon.
8. **Honor the rhythm.** Utility bar → top nav → hero → feature grid → customer marquee → CTA banner → footer. The order is the brand.
1. Visual Theme & Atmosphere
IBM’s marketing chrome is a faithful, unembellished application of Carbon Design System — IBM’s open-source enterprise design language. The dominant surface is pure white (#ffffff) with #f4f4f4 light gray for elevation, charcoal #161616 for text, and a single confident IBM Blue (#0f62fe) for primary action. The system reads as engineering documentation that learned graphic design — every page is a structured cascade of dense, factual content arranged on a 4-pixel grid.
The defining choice is flat geometry. Every CTA, every card, every input, every container uses square 0px corners with thin 1px borders. There are no rounded pills, no soft shadows, no atmospheric gradients. Where consumer brands soften corners and pile on elevation, IBM doubles down on the rule and the rectangle. The system is engineered, not stylized — and it relies on that discipline as its visual identity.
IBM Plex Sans carries the entire type hierarchy. Display sizes (76 / 60 / 42px) run at weight 300 — IBM’s signature light-display treatment that makes 76px feel calmer and more authoritative than the same size at 700 would. Body sits at weight 400 with the precise letter-spacing: 0.16px that Carbon documents — a small positive tracking detail that distinguishes IBM body copy from any default browser sans. The voice reads as careful, technical, and trustworthy.
The system reaches for color rarely. IBM Blue marks links, primary CTAs, focus rules, and the rare full-bleed CTA banner. Charcoal carries every surface that isn’t white. The footer is the only inversion above the page break — a single charcoal block that anchors every page with the same global navigation, the same legal row, the same restrained voice.
Key Characteristics:
- Carbon Design System made literal — IBM’s marketing chrome IS Carbon.
- Square 0px corners on every button, card, input, and container.
- IBM Plex Sans at weight 300 for display sizes (42–76px) — the brand’s typographic signature.
- Single accent:
#0f62feIBM Blue carries every link, primary CTA, and CTA banner. There is no second brand color. - White canvas (
#ffffff) + light gray (#f4f4f4) + charcoal (#161616) cover 95% of surfaces. - Footer inverts to charcoal
#161616— the only dark surface above the page break. - Card hierarchy is carried by 1px hairlines and surface change, never by drop shadow.
letter-spacing: 0.16pxon body is a Carbon precision detail — the small positive tracking is part of the brand voice.- Page rhythm: utility bar → top nav → hero with light-weight headline → feature card grid → customer logo marquee → enterprise feature row → newsletter / sign-in CTA → dark footer.
2. Color Palette & Roles
Primary
- Canvas (
#ffffff): The default page floor on every public marketing page. IBM has no public marketing dark mode above the footer. - Ink (
#161616): The dominant text colour. Display headlines, body, primary nav links. Never pure black — Carbon’s slightly softened ink reads warmer at large sizes. - IBM Blue (
#0f62fe/ Carbon$interactive-01/ Blue 60): The single brand voltage. Every primary CTA, every inline link, every CTA banner background.
Brand & Dark
- IBM Blue Hover (
#0050e6): Hover state for primary buttons — a single notch lighter than brand. - IBM Blue Active (
#002d9c/ Blue 80): Pressed primary button state. - IBM Blue Deep (
#0043ce/ Blue 70): Hovered link state on body type. - Surface Dark (
#161616/$background-inverse): The footer ground. The only inverted surface above the page break. - Surface Dark Elev (
#262626): One step lighter than the inverse canvas — used for footer column dividers and hovered footer items.
Accent
- Hero Blue Tint (
#e8eaff): A faint blue-to-white wash that occasionally appears behind hero illustrations. The only “decorative” colour in the system; never used as a card or CTA surface. - Cool Gray BG (
#f2f4f8/ cool-gray-10): Alternate hero band on certain product pages. A cooler-tinted off-white that distinguishes from#f4f4f4’s neutral gray.
Interactive
- Link (
#0f62fe): Default inline link colour — identical to brand. - Link Hover (
#0043ce/ Blue 70): Hovered link, with underline thickening. - Focus (
#0f62fe): The 2px outline used on every focused interactive element. - Disabled (
#8c8c8ctext on#e0e0e0surface for disabled fields).
Neutral Scale
- Ink (
#161616) — display headlines, body - Text Muted (
#525252/$text-secondary) — sub-headlines, footer body, breadcrumb - Text Soft (
#8c8c8c/$text-helper) — disabled, helper text, captions - Surface Soft (
#f4f4f4/$background-alt) — input fields, alternate-row stripes, subtle section bands - Surface Strong (
#e0e0e0/$background-active) — disabled fields, separator fill - Border (
#e0e0e0/$ui-03) — 1px borders on cards, inputs, dividers - Border Strong (
#161616/$ui-05) — 1px charcoal underline on focused inputs (Carbon’s signature focus treatment)
Surface & Borders
- Canvas (
#ffffff) — page floor - Surface Soft (
#f4f4f4) — alternate band, input fill - Surface Strong (
#e0e0e0) — disabled state - Surface Dark (
#161616) — footer ground - Border (
#e0e0e0) — default 1px hairline tone (every card, every input bottom rule) - Border Strong (
#161616) — input bottom rule, ribbon edge - Border On Dark (
#5e5e5e) — footer column separators
Shadow Colors
Carbon resists drop shadows on marketing entirely. The only documented shadows on the marketing surface are the modal scrim (rgba(0,0,0,0.5) ground) and a 2px focus ring outline (#0f62fe). Cards use 1px hairlines and surface change for hierarchy, never elevation.
Semantic
- Success (
#24a148on#defbe6) — green-50 / green-10 — confirmation states - Warning (
#f1c21bon#fcf4d6) — yellow-30 / yellow-10 — advisory banners - Danger (
#da1e28on#fff1f1) — red-60 / red-10 — error states, danger button background - Info (
#0f62feon#edf5ff) — identical to brand / blue-10 — informational badges
3. Typography Rules
Font Family
Primary: IBM Plex Sans. Fallback chain: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif. IBM Plex Sans is IBM’s open-source proprietary typeface, free for any use under the SIL Open Font License — making it the easiest “custom” face on this list to substitute for in implementation. Geometric, slightly humanist, designed specifically for enterprise UI. Plex Sans is a true single-family hierarchy: display, body, and caption all carry the same face, with hierarchy built from size and weight rather than family change.
Companions: IBM Plex Serif and IBM Plex Mono exist in the Plex family but rarely surface on marketing — the serif is reserved for editorial long-form (case studies on rare deep-dive pages) and the mono lives inside product / docs surfaces. Marketing chrome stays on Plex Sans.
OpenType features: Carbon doesn’t aggressively use OpenType features on marketing — no ss01, no tnum, no decorative alternates. The face is used as-shipped, with the precise letter-spacing: 0.16px on body sizes being the one mandatory typographic detail.
Hierarchy
| Role | Font | Size | Weight | Line Height | Letter Spacing | OT Features | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| display-xl | Plex Sans | 76 | 300 | 1.17 | -0.5px | — | Largest hero headline — light weight is the brand signature |
| display-lg | Plex Sans | 60 | 300 | 1.17 | -0.4px | — | Section opener headlines |
| display-md | Plex Sans | 42 | 300 | 1.20 | 0 | — | Sub-section headlines, hero card title |
| headline | Plex Sans | 32 | 400 | 1.25 | 0 | — | Card collection heading, FAQ category |
| card-title | Plex Sans | 24 | 400 | 1.33 | 0 | — | Feature card title |
| subhead | Plex Sans | 20 | 400 | 1.40 | 0 | — | Lead body next to display headlines |
| body-lg | Plex Sans | 18 | 400 | 1.50 | 0 | — | Hero subhead, lead paragraph |
| body | Plex Sans | 16 | 400 | 1.50 | 0.16px | — | Default body — Carbon precision tracking required |
| body-sm | Plex Sans | 14 | 400 | 1.29 | 0.16px | — | Card body, footer column body |
| body-emphasis | Plex Sans | 14 | 600 | 1.29 | 0.16px | — | Selected tab label, emphasized line |
| caption | Plex Sans | 12 | 400 | 1.33 | 0.32px | — | Captions, meta, utility bar |
| button | Plex Sans | 14 | 400 | 1.29 | 0.16px | — | Every button label across the system |
| eyebrow | Plex Sans | 14 | 400 | 1.29 | 0.16px | — | Sentence-case eyebrows (Carbon avoids tracked all-caps) |
| link | Plex Sans | 16 | 400 | 1.50 | 0.16px | — | Inline body link, blue underlined |
| nav-link | Plex Sans | 14 | 400 | 1.29 | 0.16px | — | Top-nav category labels |
| code | Plex Mono | 14 | 400 | 1.50 | 0 | — | Rare code-snippet inline (mostly product surface) |
Principles
- Light-weight display is the brand voice. Plex Sans at weight 300 for 76px headlines reads as quietly authoritative — switching to weight 700 would make IBM look like every other enterprise site. The contrast between display 300 and body 400 is what gives the brand its calm.
- Carbon’s
letter-spacing: 0.16pxon body sizes is a precision detail. It is part of the typographic voice — never remove it, even when migrating to Inter or Helvetica. - No mono on marketing. Plex Mono exists but lives in product / docs surfaces only. Marketing chrome stays on Plex Sans across every text role.
- Eyebrow typography uses sentence case 14px — Carbon resists the all-caps tracked eyebrow common to other enterprise brands. If the design feels like it needs an all-caps eyebrow, pause: that’s drift away from Carbon.
- Hierarchy by weight + size, never by colour. Body stays
#161616regardless of section context. The system never tints body type to suggest hierarchy. - Line-heights tighten on display, relax on body — 1.17 at 76px, 1.50 at 16px. Proportional to size.
- Plex Sans is open-source under SIL OFL. There is no excuse for shipping a different fallback face when implementing — Google Fonts hosts it directly.
4. Component Stylings
Buttons
button-primary — IBM Blue solid CTA. The default primary across all pages. Background #0f62fe, text #ffffff, type button (14/400/0.16px), padding 12px 16px, radius 0. Hover background flips to #0050e6, pressed flips to #002d9c — both at 110ms. No transform, no shadow, no border. The square corner is the brand.
button-secondary — Charcoal solid button — Carbon’s secondary treatment. Background #161616, text #ffffff, same padding, same square corners. Used as the second-tier action paired with primary.
button-tertiary — White button with a 1px IBM Blue border and IBM Blue text. Used for tertiary CTAs that still need a visible affordance.
button-ghost — Plain text + chevron arrow, no background, no border. IBM Blue text. Used for “Learn more →” links inside feature blocks.
button-danger — Carbon’s destructive variant. Background #da1e28 (red-60), text #ffffff, otherwise identical structure to button-primary.
Cards
feature-card — Default feature highlight tile. Background #ffffff, text #161616, body type, square corners, 24px padding. Stroked with 1px #e0e0e0. No shadow, no hover lift — the surface tone subtly shifts to #f4f4f4 on hover (110ms).
feature-card-elevated — Same shape on #f4f4f4 ground. Used for “Recommended” cards in the latest-content carousel.
product-card — Larger product showcase tile. 32px padding, otherwise identical chrome to feature-card.
hero-card — Hero composition card. Light-weight display-md (42/300) title, body-lg subhead, primary CTA. 48px padding, square corners.
cta-banner — Full-width IBM Blue CTA panel near the bottom of major pages. Background #0f62fe, text #ffffff, headline type, 48px padding, square corners. The single largest expanse of brand colour in the system.
resource-tile — Smaller article / case-study tile. 16px padding, body-sm type. Used inside resource grids on product pages.
customer-logo-tile — Single tile in the customer-logo marquee on the home page. 1px hairline, 24px padding, caption-sized type below the logo (e.g., “Pfizer”, “Ferrari”, “Citi”).
Badges, Tags, Pills
Carbon documents pill-shaped badges for product UI but rarely surfaces them on marketing. When they appear, they sit at radius: 9999 with caption-sized type, surface-soft fill, 4px×10px padding. The marketing system prefers tagging via square-cornered chips matched to the rest of the chrome — Carbon’s resistance to the rounded badge is part of its identity.
Inputs / Forms
text-input — Carbon’s distinctive input chrome. Background #f4f4f4 (surface-soft), text #161616, body type, padding 11px 16px, square corners. The defining detail: a single 1px #161616 bottom rule (no top, no left, no right border).
text-input-focused — The focused state replaces the bottom 1px charcoal rule with a 2px IBM Blue rule. No glow, no ring around the input — just the underline that changes. This is Carbon’s signature focus treatment and it is unmistakable.
text-input-error — Adds a 2px #da1e28 bottom rule with a small validation message in caption type below.
newsletter-input — The “Stay connected” newsletter capture on the home page. Identical chrome to text-input with an adjacent button-primary submit.
Tabs
product-tab + product-tab-selected — The horizontal tab strip on product pages and the home “Recommended” carousel. Default: white background, #525252 text, square corners, 16px×20px padding, 1px #e0e0e0 bottom hairline. Selected: white background, #161616 text, body-emphasis weight (14/600), 2px #0f62fe bottom underline. Same padding, same square corners.
Navigation
top-nav — Sticky white bar 48px tall. IBM 8-bar logomark left, nav categories center (Products / Solutions / Industries / Resources / Support), search and sign-in icons right. 1px #e0e0e0 bottom hairline.
utility-bar — Slim gray ribbon 32px tall above the top nav with location switch, contact, search shortcuts. Background #f4f4f4, caption-sized type in muted ink. Hides below 672px to reclaim vertical space.
Footer
footer — Charcoal footer (#161616) with the IBM wordmark left and 5–6 columns of caption-sized links. The only inverted surface above the page break. Column heads in body-sm/600 white, link lists in body-sm/400 #c6c6c6. Padding 64px×32px. Below the columns: social-icon strip, locale selector, legal/privacy fine-print row.
Decorative
There are no decorative chrome components in IBM’s marketing system. The hero may receive a faint blue-to-white gradient backdrop (#e8eaff → #ffffff) behind illustrations, but this is the only “decorative” element on the page — and it is rare. Photography and illustration carry visual interest; the chrome stays disciplined.
5. Layout Principles
Spacing System
- Base unit: 4px — Carbon’s signature 4-pixel grid.
- Scale:
4 · 8 · 12 · 16 · 24 · 32 · 48 · 64 · 96 - Card interior padding: 24px on feature cards, 32px on product cards, 48px on hero cards and CTA banners.
- Button padding: 12px vertical, 16px horizontal — Carbon spec.
- Form input padding: 11px vertical, 16px horizontal.
- Section padding: 96px vertical between major page bands on desktop, 48px on mobile.
Grid & Container
- Carbon’s 16-column grid at desktop, scaling to 8 / 4 columns at tablet / mobile.
- Max content width: 1584px (Carbon’s max-grid breakpoint).
- Card grids: 4-up at desktop, 2-up at tablet, 1-up at mobile.
- The customer-logo marquee uses fixed-width tiles in a flex row, scrolling horizontally on smaller viewports.
Whitespace Philosophy
Carbon uses precise alignment to a 4-pixel grid as its whitespace system. Sections separate via thin gray rows (#f4f4f4) rather than via large vertical gaps. Content is dense by design — IBM’s customers expect to see a lot on a page, not a lot of air. The system trusts the grid to do the work that other brands ask drop shadows and gradients to do.
Section Cadence
White → surface-soft → white. The #f4f4f4 band is the only alternation IBM allows on the body of the page. Charcoal is reserved exclusively for the footer; the cool-gray-tinted #f2f4f8 shows up rarely on certain product pages as a subtle hero band.
6. Shapes & Radius Scale
| Tier | Value | Use |
|---|---|---|
| None | 0px | Default — every button, card, input, container |
| Micro | 2px | Small badges (rare exception inside dense product UI) |
| Small | 4px | Avatar squares, dropdown menus (rare on marketing) |
| Medium | 6px | Documented for completeness; almost never used |
| Large | 8px | Documented for completeness; almost never used |
| Pill | 9999px | Status pills inside product UI (rare on marketing) |
The brand commits to flat 0px corners. The other tokens exist for product / mobile / docs surfaces but rarely appear on marketing. There are no compound radii on IBM — every interactive element is rectangular on all four corners.
7. Depth & Elevation
| Level | Treatment | Use |
|---|---|---|
| 0 — Flat | No shadow, no border | Hero text, body type, footer body — most surfaces |
| 1 — Hairline | 1px #e0e0e0 border on canvas | Feature cards, inputs, list items |
| 2 — Surface lift | #f4f4f4 background on canvas | Alternate-row banners, hovered cards |
| 3 — Surface dark | #161616 background | Footer; rare inverted CTA strip |
| 4 — Focus ring | 2px #0f62fe outline + 1px hairline-strong stack | Focused input, focused button |
| 5 — Modal | rgba(0,0,0,0.18) 0 8px 28px on dialog over scrim | Centered dialogs (sign-in, language, support) |
Shadow Philosophy
IBM resists drop shadows on marketing entirely. Depth is carried by surface change and 1px hairlines. The exception is product / app surfaces (Carbon documents shadow tokens for elevated panels), but the marketing site barely uses them. The single-tier hover lift on cards is a tone shift (#ffffff → #f4f4f4), not a transform or a shadow.
8. Interaction & Motion
Easing
- Standard productive:
cubic-bezier(0.2, 0, 0.38, 0.9)— the default for hover swaps, hairline transitions, surface tone shifts. Carbon’s documented “productive” curve. - Expressive:
cubic-bezier(0.4, 0.14, 0.3, 1)— modal entry, drawer slides, large surface entrances. - Entrance:
cubic-bezier(0, 0, 0.38, 0.9)— element enters viewport from below. - Exit:
cubic-bezier(0.2, 0, 1, 0.9)— element leaves viewport.
Durations
| Bucket | Value | Use |
|---|---|---|
| Fast | 110ms | Button background swap on hover, hairline transitions |
| Standard | 240ms | Card surface tone shift, modal scrim fade |
| Slow | 400ms | Drawer slide, large surface entrance |
Per-Component Micro-States
- Button hover: background swap from
#0f62fe→#0050e6in 110ms, no transform, no scale. - Card hover: surface tone shifts from
#ffffff→#f4f4f4in 110ms — no lift, no shadow intensify. - Input focus: bottom rule transitions from 1px
#161616→ 2px#0f62fein 110ms. - Tab selection: bottom underline transitions from 1px
#e0e0e0→ 2px#0f62fein 110ms; label weight steps 400 → 600. - Modal enter: scrim fades over 240ms (ease-standard) + dialog slides 8px → 0 with
ease-emphasized.
Page Transitions
Carbon doesn’t ship page transitions on the marketing surface. Pages load instantly with no fade-in, no slide-in chrome. The only “transition” between pages is the persistent top-nav and utility-bar that don’t animate — they just stay put across navigation events.
Reduced Motion
The system respects prefers-reduced-motion: reduce. All transforms (the rare 8px modal slide, the chevron rotation on accordions) are suppressed; transitions reduce to opacity-only. Background colour swaps remain because they don’t constitute motion, and they are essential to interaction feedback.
9. Accessibility & A11y
Contrast Pairs
- Text on canvas:
#161616on#ffffff— 16.0:1 (AAA at body, AAA at large) - Text on brand:
#ffffffon#0f62fe— 4.5:1 (AA at body, AAA at large) - Muted on canvas:
#525252on#ffffff— 7.6:1 (AAA) - Helper on canvas:
#8c8c8con#ffffff— 4.0:1 (AA at large only — Carbon avoids using helper on plain canvas for body) - Inverse text on dark:
#ffffffon#161616— 16.0:1 (AAA) - Inverse muted on dark:
#c6c6c6on#161616— 9.8:1 (AAA)
Focus Indicators
Carbon’s focus stack is unmistakable: a 2px #0f62fe outline with a 1px #161616 inner outline beneath. Together they create a thicker, higher-contrast ring than the default browser focus. Inputs additionally show their focused state via the 2px IBM Blue bottom rule.
ARIA Patterns
- Dialogs:
role="dialog"witharia-modal="true", focus trap,aria-labelledbyon the dialog title. Esc closes; Tab cycles within the dialog. - Tabs: Standard
role="tablist"/role="tab"/role="tabpanel"pattern with arrow-key navigation between tabs. Selected tab carriesaria-selected="true". - Disclosure / Accordion:
aria-expandedon the trigger,aria-controlspointing to the panel id. - Inline links: regular
<a>with no extra ARIA — link text must be self-describing (Carbon discourages “click here”).
Keyboard Navigation
Tab order: utility-bar → top-nav (logomark, nav categories, search, sign-in) → main content (hero CTA → feature cards in row order) → footer columns. Skip link to #main-content is the first focusable element on the page (Carbon documents this; some marketing pages omit it — derivative work should include).
Screen Reader Hints
Carbon prefers visible, self-describing labels over aria-label. When aria-label is necessary (icon-only buttons, search), the label matches the visible tooltip text. Decorative SVGs receive aria-hidden="true".
Reduced Motion
prefers-reduced-motion: reduce is honored. All transform-based motion (modal slides, accordion chevrons, hover scales) is suppressed; only opacity remains.
10. Responsive Behavior
Breakpoints
| Name | Width | Key Changes |
|---|---|---|
| Small | 320px | Single-column; display-xl scales 76px → ~32px; nav becomes hamburger |
| Medium | 672px | Card grid 4-up → 2-up; utility bar hides |
| Large | 1056px | Card grid 4-up restored; sub-nav becomes horizontal |
| X-Large | 1312px | Default desktop layout |
| Max | 1584px | Carbon max grid; outer gutters expand to ~80px |
Touch Targets
Carbon spec: 48px minimum tap target. Buttons and inputs hold 48px on touch viewports (versus the documented 40-44px tab desktop height). Top-nav links grow from 36px to 48px tap height on touch. Tab strip rows hold 48px tap height. Footer links pad to 48px row height.
Collapsing Strategy
- Top nav: links collapse to a hamburger overlay below 672px. Logomark and search icon stay on the bar.
- Utility bar: hides below 672px.
- Card grid: 4-up → 2-up at 1056px → 1-up below 672px.
- Display type:
display-xl76px scales toward 42px on mobile while preserving the weight-300 treatment. Line-height holds at 1.17. - Footer: 6-column link grid → 3-column at tablet → 1-column at mobile (each column header becomes a tap-to-expand row).
- Hero illustration: scales proportionally; below 672px illustrations may stack above the headline rather than sit beside it.
Image Behavior
Customer logos in the marquee maintain aspect ratio and may collapse to 2-row scroll below 672px. Hero photographs use art-direction crops on mobile (16:9 wide → 4:5 portrait) so the subject stays centered when the layout collapses to single-column.
Container Queries
Carbon doesn’t aggressively use container queries on marketing — most responsive logic lives at the document breakpoint level. Internal product surfaces (data tables, breadcrumbs) use container queries to respond to panel width independent of viewport.
11. Content & Voice
Tone
IBM’s marketing voice is technical, careful, and trustworthy — never playful, never breathless. Headlines lean factual (“Bring AI to your data”, “Empower the workforce of tomorrow”) rather than aspirational (“Imagine a world where…”). The voice borrows from engineering documentation: precise nouns, active verbs, no jargon outside the domain.
Microcopy Patterns
- Button verbs: “Try free”, “Get started”, “Contact sales”, “Learn more”, “Read the case study”, “Watch the video”. Action-first, sentence-case.
- Error messages: stated plainly. “Please enter a valid email address.” Carbon discourages cute or apologetic error copy.
- Success confirmations: brief and factual. “Email sent.” “Subscription confirmed.”
- Loading states: “Loading…” in body-sm muted. No spinners on marketing where they aren’t required.
Empty States
IBM marketing doesn’t expose many empty states (most marketing surfaces are populated). Where they appear (resource search results), the copy is direct: “No results found. Try a different search term.” A single ghost button to “Reset filters” appears below.
CTA Verb Conventions
- “Try free” — always paired with a tertiary “Contact sales” for enterprise leads.
- “Get started” — used for product trials and self-serve sign-ups.
- “Contact sales” — IBM’s preferred enterprise lead-gen phrasing over “Request a demo”.
- “Learn more” — only as a tertiary affordance with a chevron arrow (“Learn more →”). Never as primary copy.
- “Read the case study”, “Watch the video” — content-action verbs that match the asset type.
The system rejects “Click here”, “Sign up now”, “Buy now” — those phrasings read as marketing-by-default, not as IBM’s voice.
12. Dark Mode & Theming
IBM’s public marketing pages are light-only above the footer. Carbon ships a complete Gray-100 dark theme for product surfaces — same component anatomy, inverted token map (charcoal canvas, off-white ink, IBM Blue 50 for action). That dark theme is documented in the Carbon design system but is not exposed on the marketing site.
The footer is always charcoal regardless of theme — this is a constant across light and dark modes. If a derivative work needs to ship a marketing dark theme, the recommended token swap is:
bg:#ffffff→#161616surface-soft:#f4f4f4→#262626text:#161616→#f4f4f4text-muted:#525252→#c6c6c6border:#e0e0e0→#393939brand:#0f62fe→#4589ff(Carbon Blue 50 — brighter for dark surfaces)cta-bannerbackground:#0f62fe→#0353e9(slightly desaturated for dark canvas)
Plex Sans weight 300 still carries display in dark mode — the light-weight discipline holds across themes.
13. Lineage & Influences
IBM’s design lineage runs through three distinct eras and one open-source pivot:
1956–1990: Paul Rand era. IBM’s iconic 8-bar logomark (1956, refined 1972) and the Rand-designed identity system established the brand’s commitment to typographic clarity, geometric simplicity, and corporate restraint. Helvetica was the corporate face for decades. The Rand system rejected ornament, embraced grid discipline, and prioritized legibility — every Carbon decision can be traced back to this lineage.
1990–2010: ThinkPad / business-machine era. The shift toward enterprise software (DB2, WebSphere, Lotus) introduced denser interfaces and a more conservative typographic voice. The website itself was densely linked, blue-and-white, and served as a reference catalog rather than a marketing surface.
2014–today: Carbon / Plex era. IBM commissioned Mike Abbink and Bold Monday to design IBM Plex (2017) — a wholly new corporate face released open-source under SIL OFL. Carbon Design System (open-sourced 2018) codified the marketing chrome around Plex, the 4-pixel grid, square corners, and the IBM Blue voltage. The current marketing site is a faithful Carbon application — every token is documented in the public Carbon repository at carbondesignsystem.com.
Influences absorbed:
- Bauhaus / Swiss school — geometric sans, grid discipline, function-over-ornament. Plex Sans is in this lineage; the 4-pixel grid is its descendant.
- Helvetica / corporate modernism — the “international typographic style” that defined enterprise design 1960–2000. IBM was a major patron.
- Material Design (Google, 2014) — Carbon shares Material’s commitment to a documented, open-source design system, though Carbon rejects Material’s elevation/shadow language entirely.
- Atlassian Design System — peer enterprise design system; Carbon is more restrained on color and corner radius.
What it rejects:
- Atmospheric depth (no gradient backdrops beyond the rare hero blue tint).
- Rounded corners (Carbon explicitly resists the 8px / 12px radii common to consumer SaaS).
- Decorative animation (no parallax, no auto-playing video, no scroll-triggered scale effects).
- All-caps tracked eyebrows (Carbon’s eyebrows are sentence-case 14px).
Named contemporaries:
- Carbon Design System — the source documentation.
- IBM Plex — the open-source typeface.
- HashiCorp — peer enterprise design with similar restraint, more rounded corners.
- Datadog — peer enterprise design with more aggressive use of color (purple).
14. Do’s and Don’ts
Do
- Use 0px corners on every CTA, card, input, and container. The flat-square aesthetic is the brand.
- Pair Plex Sans weight 300 for display sizes (42px+) with weight 400 for body. Resist the urge to bold the headline.
- Reserve
#0f62feIBM Blue for primary CTAs, links, focused-input underlines, and CTA banners. Do not use it as a card background or eyebrow color. - Apply
letter-spacing: 0.16pxto body sizes. It’s a Carbon precision detail and part of the typographic voice. - Use surface change (
#ffffff→#f4f4f4) and 1px hairlines for card hierarchy. Skip drop shadows. - Stick to sentence case for eyebrows and section labels — Carbon resists all-caps tracking on marketing.
- Invert to
#161616only at the footer; the rest of the page stays light. - Honor the 4-pixel grid for all spacing decisions —
4 · 8 · 12 · 16 · 24 · 32 · 48 · 64 · 96. - Use Plex Sans, not Inter or Helvetica, when the typeface choice matters — Plex is open-source and free under SIL OFL.
Don’t
- Don’t round corners on buttons, cards, or inputs. Even 4px rounded corners break the Carbon look.
- Don’t bold display headlines. Plex Sans at weight 300 is the brand voice; weight 700 makes it look generic.
- Don’t add atmospheric depth (gradient backdrops, drop shadows, atmospheric overlays) outside the documented soft-blue hero gradient.
- Don’t introduce a second brand color. IBM Blue is the only chromatic accent; status semantics use the documented green / yellow / red.
- Don’t replace IBM Plex Sans with Inter or Helvetica without preserving the
letter-spacing: 0.16pxand weight-300 display treatment. - Don’t use pill-shaped buttons. Carbon uses square corners; pills read as a different brand.
- Don’t write all-caps tracked eyebrows on marketing surfaces. Carbon’s eyebrows are sentence case at 14px.
- Don’t use Plex Mono on marketing — it lives in product / docs surfaces only.
- Don’t pile up shadows for hover states. The card hover is a tone shift, not an elevation lift.
15. Agent Prompt Guide
Quick Color Reference
- Canvas:
#ffffff - Surface Soft:
#f4f4f4 - Ink:
#161616 - Text Muted:
#525252 - IBM Blue:
#0f62fe - IBM Blue Hover:
#0050e6 - IBM Blue Active:
#002d9c - Border:
#e0e0e0 - Footer Ground:
#161616 - Focus Ring:
#0f62fe
Example Component Prompts
- “Create a hero with a 76px IBM Plex Sans display headline at weight 300 and
-0.5pxletter-spacing, an 18px Plex Sans body subhead at weight 400 withletter-spacing: 0.16px, and a primary#0f62feCTA with white text, square 0px corners, 12×16px padding, and weight-400 14px button label. No shadow, no gradient, no rounded corners.” - “Design a feature card on
#ffffffwith a 1px#e0e0e0hairline border, square 0px corners, 24px padding. Title in 24px Plex Sans / 400, body in 16px Plex Sans / 400 with0.16pxtracking, and a tertiary ‘Learn more →’ chevron link in#0f62fe. No drop shadow.” - “Build a Carbon text input:
#f4f4f4background fill, square 0px corners, 11×16px padding, 1px#161616bottom rule. On focus, the bottom rule becomes 2px#0f62fe. No glow ring, no full border.” - “Create a customer-logo marquee: 4-up flex row of 1px-bordered
#fffffftiles, 24px padding, square corners. Each tile holds a logomark and the customer name in 12px Plex Sans / 400 /0.32pxtracking, muted to#525252.” - “Design a CTA banner: full-width
#0f62fepanel, 48px padding, square corners. White headline at 32px Plex Sans / 400, body in 18px / 400 with0.16pxtracking, and a white ‘Try free’ button with the same square 0px corners.” - “Build the footer: full-width
#161616panel, 64×32px padding, 5–6 columns of caption-sized links. Column heads in 14px Plex Sans / 600 white, link lists in 14px / 400#c6c6c6. The IBM 8-bar logomark anchors the top-left.”
Iteration Guide
- Audit corners first. Every interactive surface should be 0px. If you see 4px or 6px radius anywhere, flatten it — Carbon’s brand depends on it.
- Audit display weight. Plex Sans display at 300, body at 400. If any headline above 32px is bolder than 300, drop it back.
- Audit body tracking.
letter-spacing: 0.16pxon every body-size token. Removing it makes the typography read as default-Inter. - Audit color sprawl. Only
#0f62feoutside grayscale + semantic. Any orange, purple, or green is drift. - Audit eyebrows. Sentence case 14px, no all-caps, no positive tracking beyond
0.16px. If you see “AI SOLUTIONS” instead of “AI solutions”, that’s drift. - Audit shadows. Strip every
box-shadow. If a card needs to feel elevated, change its surface tone (#ffffff→#f4f4f4) or add a 1px hairline. - Audit spacing. Every value should be on the 4-pixel grid:
4 · 8 · 12 · 16 · 24 · 32 · 48 · 64 · 96. Anything else is breaking Carbon. - Honor the rhythm. Utility bar → top nav → hero → feature grid → customer marquee → CTA banner → footer. The order is the brand.
Drop ibm into your project, then ship the actual sections in an afternoon.
1 · install design
npx design-md add ibm 2 · ship landing page
npx agentkit init --design ibm dark multi-color
HashiCorp
Black canvas hosting a per-product color portfolio — Terraform purple, Vault yellow, Con…
Docs
Install
HashiCorp
webdesignhot
light structured
Datadog
NationalWeb on white with the iconic `#632ca6` purple — observability dressed as an ente…
Docs
Install
Datadog
webdesignhot
dark sans
GitHub
Dark-canvas developer-platform marketing — Mona Sans variable headings, lime-green accen…
Docs
Install
GitHub
webdesignhot