The expansion of display typefaces in the first half of the nineteenth century was enabled by innovative technologies such as the pantograph, composite matrices, and the use of inexpensive wood. All contemporary trends were reflected in alphabet designs of the period — slab serifs, sans-serifs, extremely bold, and decorative typefaces. Many typefaces of the time, used for inexpensive poster printing, employed aggressive, extremely condensed extra-bold or extra-light constructions in order to attract attention.
The range of display versions in the Tabac Big Slab family draws on these proven principles and, thanks to the advantages of digital production, allows them to be taken to extreme limits. The shared stroke model across all stylistic variants begins with the ultra-thin Hair weight and culminates in the maximally dark Black weight. Carefully chosen interpolation presents a palette of eight weights with corresponding italics. The character design is based on appropriate historical models in their original proportions, but is not merely mechanically condensed; the rhythm of vertical stems and curved strokes in relation to inter-letter spacing is evenly distributed. The x-height is raised to the maximum, while the descenders are significantly shortened, allowing even short words in multi-line headlines to form compact, cohesive blocks.
Tabac Big Sans retains as much of its monolinear character as possible even in its heaviest weights, and can be used as a complementary condensed style in regular typesetting. In headlines, it fills and dominates the entire line with a dense and richly textured typographic mass.

Thanks to the styles of the Tabac Big Slab, the Tabac superfamily becomes an ultimate tool for publication design.