Design kits

To design with the Carbon Axure Kit you must have the latest version of Axure RP installed.

The library contains the widgets for Carbon components, design elements, and other common shapes.

Download the .rplib file to your computer. Open Axure and click the Add Library + icon at the top of the Libraries pane. Locate and select the IBM Carbon 10.rplib file.

This Axure file has the settings that are required for the proper display of elements.

To get started, familiarize yourself with the contents of the template and widget library.

Create a new project document with the template by opening ibm-carbon-template.rp and saving a copy.

In the template, IBM Plex Sans and IBM Plex Mono are included as web fonts in the Generate HTML settings and will be displayed properly on any computer, even without these fonts being installed locally.

The Default, Paragraph, and Text Link styles are pre-configured, which allows text to be pasted from the clipboard or text link inserted in a paragraph to match the typography and color guidelines by default.

Use the widgets from the IBM Carbon 10 Axure library installed in step two to start designing. You’ll find the widgets located in the Libraries pane in the left side panel. To add a widget to the canvas, click and drag it from the Libraries pane.

All widgets come with styles and interactions already built into them. To edit the widgets, follow the guide in the Carbon Axure Kit documentation that will help you to maintain the designed behavior of the elements.

If you are brand new to Axure, they offer tutorials to get you started.

We make small adjustments and bug fixes to the kit on a regular basis. When a new version of the library is available, you need to download the new file to replace the old one. Releases will be posted to the GitHub repo.

If you’re an IBMer, join the #carbon-axure-kit Slack channel to get notified about changes.

In an Axure RP document, styles already in use in the document prevail when adding widgets from a library. The existing style in the document will be applied to a library widget when the widget is dragged onto the document canvas.

Replacing the library won’t update the widget styles in your existing project files automatically. Follow the manual process below to update the styles.

Import the styles from the library file into project documents using the Import Wizard.

Can’t find an answer to your question? Open an issue on GitHub.