IBM has always been a pioneer in the world of type. For instance, in 1955 it commissioned Courier–a typeface whose letters and spaces all have fixed widths–which became the official font of screenplays, since writers can be certain that one page equals one minute of screen time. And IBM’s iconic Selectric typewriter, with its interchangeable font balls, liberated typewriter users from the monotony of single typefaces in the 1960s.

But oddly enough, while IBM itself had developed a strong visual brand though its logo, its architecture, and its products, it never had its own bespoke corporate typeface. In the past, the company’s default typeface was Helvetica Neue, “the font of science and the information age, with a precision and objectivity that commands respect,” as its previous style guide states. The revered typeface’s crisp, neutral look communicated a certain sensibility in the 20th century, but for where IBM wanted to go in the 21st century, it had outlived its usefulness.

Last week, the company finally debuted its own typeface: IBM Plex, which is designed to be used almost everywhere letters appear in the IBM universe. Think of it as the company’s “next” Helvetica.

IBM earned its stripes as the maker of physical “business machines”–mainframe computers, laptops, microprocessors, typewriters, and more. More recently, it’s invested billions in Watson, an artificial intelligence platform that it emphasizes is a tool to augment humans. When the company rebranded Watson a few years ago, it explored the idea of a cognitive typeface. Could Watson animate its speech–like humans do naturally–through typography to give it character, personality, and voice? The concept never moved past the idea phase, but it opened up a conversation about why IBM has never developed a custom corporate typeface to do the same.

“When I think about brand building, I always do a little test,” Todd Simmons–IBM’s VP of brand experience and design and a former creative director at Wolff Olins–tells Co.Design. “If you covered up the logo, would you still recognize [the brand] as IBM?” Since Helvetica is also the typeface of countless other brands, it wasn’t doing the heavy lifting it needed. IBM didn’t pass Simmons’s test.

IBM’s executive creative director Mike Abbink drew his inspiration from the company’s modernist roots, but also designed Plex with an eye for where the company is heading in the future. The glyphs riff on the interplay of “engineered” hard edges and “humanist” curves, which is also found in Paul Rand’s iconic eight-bar logo. Abbink and IBM are working closely with the Dutch font foundry Bold Monday to build out the alphabets and symbols.

“The ‘IBMness’ comes through because it’s half man, half machine,” Simmons says of Plex’s design. “It’s the ideology of progress. There’s constant duality. That was a big influence for us.”