STORY

Open-sourcing design: how IBM brought design to the heart of their organisation

Democratizing Design Thinking

IBM is on a mission to put human-centred design at the heart of technology. They offer free courses on Design Thinking not only to their employees but to anyone who’s interested. By making these courses accessible, IBM is helping teams around the globe focus on people first in technology.

Check out IBM’s Design Thinking courses:
https://www.ibm.com/design/thinking/

I had the chance to train in Design Thinking with IBM and later went on to coach companies worldwide on applying this collaborative, human-centred approach to their challenges. My wildest adventure was conducting a Design Thinking training in Hong Kong, where we worked with a global logistics company to develop new training for their employees.

A font for everyone

IBM is also committed to the visual side of things; they created a custom-designed font family — IBM Plex. It’s fully open-sourced and supports over 100 languages! While other companies struggle with bewildering brand and product appearances through inconsistent typography, IBM makes it easy to use their font: IBM Plex is freely available on Google Fonts and can be used in any presentation, design file, or document.

I personally love the IBM Plex typeface; it’s so versatile and powerful. Using it as my go-to font in various projects, I am an undercover IBM design advocate (even when working for Pivotal/VMware/Broadcom).

You can explore IBM Plex here:
https://www.ibm.com/plex/

Open-sourcing creativity

IBM has shared even more design resources with the world. Their Carbon Design System, an extensive toolkit for building digital experiences, is available for everyone. Designers and developers can also take advantage of their illustration starter kit and colour palette, all designed to help create inclusive, accessible, and beautiful digital experiences.

As a designer, I’ve often felt a little antsy by the lack of a cohesive design language in some companies I’ve worked for. If the company doesn’t invest in cultivating a design practice and creating beautiful and functional design resources, how will it be able to establish consistent, high-quality services at scale?

Check out IBM’s Design Language here:
https://www.ibm.com/design/language/resources/

Aside from me fangirling over it, why is open-sourcing design such a brilliant move?

By open-sourcing their design resources, IBM is driving innovation and modernization. Open source allows teams everywhere to adapt, build upon, and expand these resources, leading to new ideas and creativity.

IBM’s decision to open source the Carbon Design System in 2015 was significant because it was one of the first moves by a large technology company to release a comprehensive, fully open-source design system tailored for its own products and for wider community use. It set a precedent for other tech giants like Microsoft (with Fluent UI) and Atlassian (with their Design System) to do the same.

Open-sourcing also accelerates digital transformation. In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, open source offers the flexibility and speed needed to remain agile and competitive. This strategy reinforces IBM’s commitment to making technology work better for everyone.

Did You Know? The iconic IBM logo — “Eye-Bee-M” — was designed by the legendary Paul Rand, underscoring IBM’s long-standing appreciation for great design.

What other companies contributed to open-souring design? Any particular examples you love?

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