Fontduet

IBM Plex Sans + IBM Plex Serif

technicaleditorialclassic

Grumpy wizards make toxic brew

A standfirst set in IBM Plex Serif, one size up — where a pairing starts earning trust.

The five boxing wizards jump quickly over the lazy dog, mixing jugs of quiet vodka while the jury watches. Click anywhere in this preview and type your own text to try the pairing.

“Type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters.”

— Matthew Carter

Fig. 1 — IBM Plex Sans over IBM Plex Serif, in the wild.

IBM Plex Sans 600 / IBM Plex Serif 400 — click any section and type your own copy.

Why it works

Plex Sans and Plex Serif were drawn together by Mike Abbink and Bold Monday on shared skeletons and identical vertical metrics, so mixing them is less a pairing than two voices of one typeface. The grotesque headings carry IBM's engineered neutrality; the serif body adds a journalistic, almost typewriter-adjacent warmth to running text. The result feels rigorous and bookish at once — well suited to research writing, case studies and technical publications.

More about each face: IBM Plex Sans · IBM Plex Serif

Use this pairing

HTML — Google Fonts embed
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=IBM+Plex+Sans:wght@600&family=IBM+Plex+Serif:wght@400;600&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">
CSS
h1, h2, h3 {
  font-family: 'IBM Plex Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
  font-weight: 600;
}

body {
  font-family: 'IBM Plex Serif', Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;
  font-weight: 400;
}
Next.js — next/font
import { IBM_Plex_Sans, IBM_Plex_Serif } from "next/font/google";

const heading = IBM_Plex_Sans({
  subsets: ["latin"],
  weight: "600",
  variable: "--font-heading",
});

const body = IBM_Plex_Serif({
  subsets: ["latin"],
  weight: "400",
  variable: "--font-body",
});
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