Cultrface – a blog dedicated to culture and how it enriches our lives.

Massimo Vignelli and Matej Latin say you only need 5 fonts

Vignelli once said that our growing collection of fonts represented “a new level of visual pollution threatening our culture. Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones and trash the rest”. Of those few, he selected 5:

As for Matej Latin, his 5 were:

He then left a template for anyone to pick their 5 using “a geometric sans serif, a high quality serif for long text, a workhorse font, a web safe font, a variable font”:

If you take a closer look, you’ll notice that this list of types of fonts aligns perfectly with my own “5 fonts” list. Gilroy is a geometric sans serif font that I really like because it feels modern (unlike Futura which may look dated in some occasions). Meta is my high quality serif font because it’s really well designed, it works really well for paragraphs and has many OpenType features like ligatures, alternative digit styles and much more.

Roboto is a typical workhorse font family. It comes in many different styles and weights and is very well designed. It consists of a sans serif, a slab serif and a mono style and can be used for anything from long paragraphs to UI labels and code snippets.

Work Sans is a variable sans serif font that I really like. It’s highly legible, even at smaller sizes which makes it great for UI design. The fact that it’s variable means that I can match various weights to get a good balance between font sizes which helps my UI designs look slicker.

And the last is Georgia, an underrated web safe font. It looks quite modern which is fascinating, because it was designed a while ago. It comes with old style figures, often called “lowercase digits.” That makes it great for paragraphs, especially when I need to save a few kilobytes. I have been saying this for a while, web safe fonts don’t suck. They’re completely free as we don’t need to pay to use them and they also don’t add any weight to our websites so they load faster. More on web safe fonts another time.

My 5 essential fonts are:

That list isn’t laminated but it covers most of my favourite fonts that I use the most. Gibson is the main heading font for Sampleface (my music blog) and I use it as the main font in one of my favourite games, Championship Manager 01/02. Helvetica is Helvetica and while it’s overused elsewhere, I like to use it in certain situations and as body text when I can. Cooper Black is iconic and great for titles when you need a bit of versatile flair. Georgia is a great web safe font and alternative to using sans-serif fonts. Finally, I picked Univers because I like its print heritage and its form and I’ve used an alternative version called Fluxisch Else for many album covers over the years to emulate that scruffy printed feel.

Toy Galaxy on Samurai Pizza Cats

The Many Controversies of Samurai Pizza Cats: Racism, Gag Dubs & Disney Trying to Kill It!

They’re cats who are also samurai and they like pizza. What’s not to love? Unfortunately, racism and a bunch of other issues stopped Samurai Pizza Cats from being greater than the premise was and Dan Larson tells the story of its history.

If you want to see what all the fuss was about, you can stream it for free on Peacock or Amazon Prime.

When Solomon Leyva took his titan arum to an abandoned gas station

The titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum), is a flowering plant also known as ‘the corpse flower’ due to its stench similar to a rotting corpse. Solomon Leyva owned one of these plants and decided to take it to the site of an abandoned gas station in California for others to admire. Atlas Obscura interviewed him about the idea:

What made you decide to take the flower out on the town?

What’s the point in having it? It was only going to bloom for a day—I mean, I have to share it. I don’t know what else I would have done.

There’s a really great, cute little community in the city that I live in, and I just thought everybody would enjoy seeing it. I was out from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., and again the next day. The first day, it was really cold and [the plant] wasn’t enthusiastic about opening all the way. The second day, it had been in my greenhouse and opened more. Everybody was fascinated and happy—they’ve had their [vaccine] shots and are wanting to come out.

The cute Art Deco gas station that’s been out of commission for over 30 years across from city hall—I couldn’t think of any better place to bring it. Everywhere else has sidewalks or patio seating for restaurants. Also, I had to put in a wagon and was pulling it down the street, and I didn’t want to go across town. I couldn’t fit it in my van; it was too tall. I’m 5-foot-10, and it was a few inches shorter than me.

Nearly everyone remarked about the smell, but some didn’t find the smell until it wafted up with the breeze. Everyone took their mask off to smell it. I let kids play with it, dogs jump up on it. There’s no sense in protecting something that’s only going to live for a day. Everybody just has their memory, and that’s all you get. What better way to say goodbye to the pandemic than to watch a corpse flower bloom?

Not even the foul, deathly odour of a plant could stop people from keeping their masks on. Incredible.

That time Bully Maguire went on Family Feud

Bully Maguire on Family Feud

I’ve already shown my love for Steve Harvey memes but I’ve recently got into “Bully Maguire” memes, involving clips of Toby Maguire’s rendition of Peter Parker in Spider-Man 3. This one is expertly crafted, showing Parker trying to win a staff job with double the money. Look out for special guest star Harry Osborne.

Observer on The Rock’s Jungle Movie Cinematic Universe

The Rock is in everything and has been for over a decade now. Observer examined his latest film, Jungle Cruises, and how he’s built up a cinematic universe around jungle movies:

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s Jungle Cruise is a breezy swashbuckling adventure that delivers audiences an enjoyable dose of Indiana Jones Lite crossed with The Mummy 2.0. But we really shouldn’t be surprised by that. Johnson, Hollywood’s best rendition of a throwback butts-in-seats populist movie star, has quietly turned the wilderness into his big screen bread and butter. To date, he’s starred in five films where he does battle with the forces of otherworldly nature, all primarily set within jungles: The Rundown (2003), Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012), Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017), Jumanji: The Next Level (2019), and Jungle Cruise (2021).

It’s wild (pun intended) to think The Rock has been in enough movies of this type to have a jungle cinematic universe… and that only constitutes a portion of his filmography. He’s already part of the Fast & Furious universe and he’s been in a few Disney movies. Oh, and he’ll be playing Black Adam in 2022 thus becoming a part of the DCEU. We need a data visualisation of this!

A guide to Palestinian cinema for newbies (by Hyperallergic)

Munir Atalla compiled a great list of Palestinian films for beginners [archived]:

[…] Interestingly, it has often been Palestine’s proximity to journalists, with their power and modern equipment, that has inspired us to take our narrative into our own hands. The result is that a fragmented mess of people — spanning those living under occupation in the West Bank, under siege in Gaza, as second-class citizens in Israel, and a worldwide diaspora — has created one of the richest and most productive collective oeuvres of the Global South.

And if you want more, there are a few Letterboxd lists to try including this Palestinian cinema archive.

What if there was a '48 Laws of Power' for cats?

McSweeney’s, at their irreverent best, posted some excerpts from “The 48 Laws of Power for Cats”:

Law 3: Conceal Your Intentions

For humans, this simply means hiding your intentions from other humans, which they seem to do quite frequently. As a cat, you need to go further and conceal your intentions from all living things, including yourself. To truly master this Law, you must have no idea what you intend to do. You must be able to suddenly bolt out of a room at full speed for reasons that nobody, even you, can fathom. Let go of purpose and meaning. Embrace the chaos. Discernable intentions are for lesser creatures, like dogs and social media influencers.

Law 6: Create an Air of Mystery

For humans, this probably means stupid and petty stuff like using a pseudonym, starting rumors about yourself, or changing your style dramatically and abruptly. You, a cat, are already poorly understood by your human housemates, so you must be extreme to achieve real mystery. For example, every now and again, try staring into the empty upper corner of a room for hours. You will become an enigma, an unsolvable cipher. They will talk about this for years, always trying to determine why you did it. Only you will know the truth.

Cat literature-related: Pussy and Her Language – A Pamphlet For Cats

Jeff Bridges on his experiences as Obadiah Stane in 'Iron Man'

While falling down a YouTube recommendation rabbit hole, I managed to rediscover one of my favourite Jeff Bridges scenes of all time:

But the experience of playing Obadiah Stane in Iron Man wasn’t plain sailing for Jeff Bridges as he discussed in a Variety interview in 2016:

“I like to be prepared,” Bridges said. “I like to know my lines.”

Bridges discussed the difficulties when filming “Iron Man” back in 2007, when the script was constantly being changed or altered. He detailed several of the setbacks the cast and crew faced after parts of the script were disavowed by Marvel.

“It turned out that many times — 10, 12, 15 times — we would show up for the days work, not knowing what we were gonna shoot,” Bridges said. “All the guys in the studio are sitting there tapping their foot, looking at their watch, and we’re sitting in my trailer trying to figure out my lines.”

However, it was also during this experience that Bridges learned not to take the process so seriously.

“I made a little adjustment in my head,” Bridges explained. “That adjustment was – Jeff, just relax, you are in a $200 million student film, have fun, just relax.”

I love that he called it a $200 million student film which I’m sure riled up some fans. MCU films are more polished these days (I hope) and—SPOILER ALERT—while Obadiah Stane died in that movie, he did make a cameo in Spider-Man: Far from Home which was just the above YouTube clip as a flashback.

Easy Klein is an 'Incredibly Kleinish Blue' paint for everyone to use

Simon Semple gave us the world’s pinkest pink that Anish Kapoor was banned from using in reaction to Kapoor’s exclusive Vantablack, the world’s blackest black. And now we have a new form of paint democracy from the artist called Easy Klein. But it has nothing to do with Kapoor this time.

A paint called YInMn Blue was released as a modern interpretation of Yves Klein’s famous International Klein Blue (my favourite blue ahead of cobalt blue, by the way). But at $200 a bottle, it’s not for everyone. So Semple decided to do his own thing:

Semple’s response was to do away with both that prohibitive pricing and Klein’s legal protection of his blue which stated in 1960 that other artists would require permission to use it. According to Culture Hustle, which is selling Semple’s new easy to use, acrylic paint version, it has “an uncanny scent of CK One.”

“Due to legal reasons, I can’t tell you our blue is IKB, International Klein Blue, but what I can say is that it’s an Incredibly Kleinish Blue,” says Semple. “In my mind, it’s the most beautiful blue ever and, although YinMin is cool, a lot of us have always dreamed of having a go on IKB.”

Quote from Creative Boom article

Easy Klein is a fraction of the price at $29 a bottle and it looks just as good, in my opinion.

Blue related: Blue rinse and the blue cows of Latvia

The Mandalorian pinball machine

The Mandalorian Pinball - Official Game Trailer

The Mandalorian has been a major hit for Star Wars fans and now there’s an officially licenced pinball machine for it. Stern Pinball, Inc. has made a new line of 3 Mandalorian pinball machines in Pro, Premium, and Limited Edition models.

Prepare for battle on the gravity-changing, rotating Encounter upper mini playfield available on the Premium and Limited Edition models. This innovative, motorized rotating playfield is packed with six stand-up targets, lights, and two full-size flippers for high intensity pinball action.

Watch out for ambushes! Like the Mandalorian seen in the series, players can be ambushed by enemy forces. A dynamic inner loop shot activates an up/down horseshoe scoop ramp for fast, repeatable precision shooting, creating tense experiences on the Premium and Limited Edition models.

Players can navigate their way to multiball mayhem by hitting a unique hanging uplift target attached to a custom molded Razor Crest ship. Success in hitting the target qualifies a center ramp shot on the Pro, Premium, and Limited Edition models.

Prices start at $6,199 USD for the Pro Model, $7,799 USD for the Premium Model, and $9,199 USD for the Limited Edition Model (of which only 750 will be available).

gal-dem on visual artists depicting life in Jamaica

Happy Jamaican Independence Day!

For gal-dem, Pacheanne Anderson compiled a list of filmmakers, artists, and photographers showcasing life in Jamaica from the Blue Mountains to the troubled streets:

There are of course many artists belonging to the Caribbean diaspora working and living in the US and UK such as Karen Mc Lean, Terrell Villiers and RIP Germain (all of whom are worth a mention in this arena). However, here, we are focusing on artists living and working on the island. Artists who take a close look into Jamaican lifestyle in all its facets, from the spirituality found within the bushes high up in the mountains, to the political and economic turmoil present in the depths of parts of its most celebrated towns like Kingston.

There’s some amazing work on the list so go check out the article on gal-dem. And Jamdown forever!