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Typography

Carbon provides two type sets that support both productive and expressive moments. Primarily, productive was designed for product and expressive was designed for web pages, but there are opportunities to blend contrasting moments to provide clarity through hierarchy, and elevate the overall experience.

Overview

Within Carbon, there are two type sets available for use with productive and expressive moments. The productive type styles were developed for product design, and the expressive, more editorial type styles were developed for IBM.com website pages.

The overarching rule has been to use the productive type styles for product design and the expressive for editorial pages. For the most part, this is still a good guideline to follow. However, there are situations where we can create contrasting moments that better support the user’s intention or task.

Let’s look at the respective design rationales for each experience, and then see where it makes sense to provide a blend.

Productive use cases

Carbon Design System started as the design system for Cloud console and provides typography that supports productive use cases.

When to use productive type styles

The key drivers for the use of productive type styles are:

  • Users are focused on getting a specific job done.
  • Interactions are more active, through inputs, forms, and controls.
  • Users are embedded within the experience, often on one page, for awhile.
  • Key performance indicators consider success in terms of time needed to complete a task and also the abandonment rate.

Given these considerations, space efficiency is key. Keeping content condensed is helpful to support focus on complex tasks.

Styles for productive moments

To create productive moments, use the body styles and supporting styles with the 01 suffix, as well as the fixed headings.

To ensure consistent line heights, use the following pairings:

  • pair body-compact-01 with the heading-compact-01
  • pair body-01 with the heading-01

Productive headings are fixed.

Expressive use cases

Carbon for IBM.com is for the creators of IBM.com and it provides typography that supports expressive use cases.

When to use expressive type styles

The key drivers for the use of expressive type styles are:

  • Users are trying to learn and explore, and are primarily scanning and reading.
  • Interactions are more passive through impactful imagery, layout, and long form reading.
  • Users typically traverse a series of pages during one session.
  • Key performance indicators consider success in terms of click-through rates and final purchases.

Given these considerations, larger type sizes and a more editorial approach allows users to scan, read, and navigate multiple pages with comfort and ease.

Styles for expressive moments

To create expressive moments, use the body styles and supporting styles with the 02 suffix. There are also two fixed headings, as well as fluid headings that will adjust with different breakpoints.

For the fixed headings, ensure consistent line heights by using the following pairings:

  • pair body-compact-02 with the heading-compact-02
  • pair body-02 with the heading-02

As well as these two fixed headings, there is a set of fluid headings that add a series of scales and fluid behavior.

Blending type sets

The spaces we are designing for are no longer neatly divided between productive and expressive. Both product and web pages can be blended with what we call “moments” if the alternative type set better supports the function.

Users working in product pages benefit from an expressive moment for easy reading or a pause. In these cases, however the “moment” would span a full page or banner where there are no containers.

If your users are working in a product but pausing to read or scan for options, an expressive moment can facilitate easy reading and/or create a desired impact or pause. In these cases, however the “moment” would span a full page or banner where there are no containers.

If your users are on the website and reading, but then switch to a focused task within the web experience, using productive styles within that component would facilitate focus.

Using productive moments within IBM.com pages

Here are some of the places the Dotcom team uses productive moments:

  • The global masthead mega menu
  • IBM.com search
  • Commerce
  • Product configuration
  • Account creation
  • Filter panel in catalogs
Example of productive type styles in website mega menu

The mega menu with the more compact productive type styles allows users to see the full range of offerings.