Tabac Sans

Tabac Sans is a linear, dynamic sans serif type that blurs the lines between text and title typefaces. Drawing on the rich tradition of European type design, the humanist basis supports excellent readability even at the smallest letter sizes, while unique details and a wide array of alternative glyphs prove highly effectual in titles and headlines. The broad variety of types and weights make this font family a versatile aid when composing complex magazine and newspaper layouts. 

Tabac Sans can form an extensive superfamily with the old style serifed typeface Tabac, but is just as effective as an entirely independent font family. This is due to the unusual approach used to create complementary fonts ― Tabac Sans adopts the same vertical proportions, rich letterform connotations and broad palette of characters from the outstroke version, but in all else it is an underived type family with its own sources of inspiration. While the serifed Tabac builds on the old-style classic serif model, the Tabac Sans family paraphrases modern attempts at creating linear letters based on the foundations of Renaissance and Baroque fonts. It does so with a certain dose of overstatement and invention that makes it possible to expand basic letter shapes to include vertical serifs on “C” and “c” or diagonally crop the stems on lower-case letters, thus supporting their subtle calligraphic inspiration. In the end, all of these elements produce the inimitable character of the entire font family. 

The sizable range of bolds corresponds to the special demands placed on sans typefaces. Seven weights, from Hairline to Extra Black, easily cover the needs for challenging text and display layouts. The character strokes are robust; letters sitting firmly on the baseline, the higher x-height and letterform diversity all support readability and distinguishability at smaller scales. The monolinear character of thin styles shifts smoothly into high-contrast letters in darker weights. Carefully integrated into the characters, the pronounced diacriticals traditionally cover a broad range of languages that use the Latin alphabet.

In all styles, the typeface is loaded with alternative upper and lower case characters that can fundamentally change the appearance of the layout. These are launched using OpenType stylistic sets. The SS01 set activates all alternative characters; in sets SS02 through SS09, individual alternatives can be turned on to satisfy specific needs. The SS10 set activates an alternative ampersand and a thin times character suited for typesetting artwork dimensions. Other stylistic sets present caps, numbers and several other characters in square, circle, filled and empty boxes. Magazines and newspapers often insert subheadings to add variety to the layout. In the Tabac Sans typeface, special decorative quotation marks can be used to mark these subheadings. Several different traditional (single and double) as well as angle quotation marks are available. Small graphic elements are an essential part of modern layouts to add variety to the page. Each font comes loaded with these sorts of "service" glyphs. To note that an article continues on the next page, for example, several types of arrows can be used; likewise, one can find many ways to graphically depict the end of an article. Like all of our typefaces designated for universal use, Tabac Sans also contains nine types of numerals. Proportional lining figures are set as the default, and in all applications supporting OpenType these can be easily exchanged for proportional non-lining, tabular or tabular non-lining figures. The numerals also have small caps, and the character set contains superscript and subscript figures and fractions.