About IBM Carbon
Carbon is the open-source design system behind IBM Cloud, Watson and Cognos. In the Gray 10 theme the page is a cool #F4F4F4, white tiles sit flush on a 16-column 2x Grid, corners are square, dividers are 1px Gray 20, and Blue 60 is the one colour that means "you can click this".
Everything is set in IBM Plex: Light for big headings, Regular for reading, SemiBold for labels, Mono for IDs and numbers. Depth comes from tone, not shadow. It is a console built to be worked in for eight hours.
- Origin
- IBM Design, Austin, Texas, United States
- Era
- 2017 public release with IBM Plex; Carbon v10 2019; v11 layer tokens 2022–present
- Key figures
- Mike Abbink · Paul van der Laan · Pieter van Rosmalen · Paul Rand
- Movements
- Enterprise design systems · IBM Design Language · Swiss-modernist grid discipline
IBM Carbon design spec
Colors
Background
Surface
Primary
Secondary
Accent
Text
Typography
IBM Plex SansHeadings
IBM Plex MonoMono
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