An Indie Approach to DataViz—Creating Market Cafe Magazine
Co-Founders Tiziana Alocci and Piero Zagami talk about their love for print and tackling activism through data visualization
Market Cafe Mag is a unique publication. It is the first magazine that focuses completely on Data Visualization. Recently, Tiziana Alocci and Piero Zagami, co-founders and art directors of the Market Cafe Mag and I had a chance to talk about the creative process in putting together their magazine. It is available only as a printed form. The magazine is created as an artisanal product, where each copy of the limited edition issues is hand-numbered. Each of the five issues published focuses on a different topic, ranging from Truthfulness in Data to Activism in Data Visualization.
Market Cafe Magazine is a 100 percent independent, self-published, self-distributed magazine. The magazine at the time of writing this article has been awarded the shortlist for Visualization & Information Design Category in the Information is Beautiful 2019 Awards.
Yvonne Beirne Fitzgerald: While holding your magazines, it made me wonder what is the transition like in creating a physical publication versus an online project?
Market Cafe Mag: We love this question, because we can talk about our love for print. For us, the starting point was the idea of creating a physical archive of so many projects that we love. Our goal when we started was to move away from working with digital as both of us are information designers, and as you can imagine we do a lot of digital work these days. We wanted a bit of fresh air, creating something different that was physical — tangible.
And we think the magazine is something different. It is a consumable product, which is different from than the ones you create online. It leaves a very tangible trace from its content, to the design, and the look and feel. Some people love the idea that it’s a collectible. Some people just want to consume the content and then move on to the next thing. So there’s definitely that kind of excitement of not knowing what the readers will make of this. Not everyone will have the same reaction. And it works great without wi-fi!
YBF: Each issue has a theme, how is the theme selected?
MCM: We look around us. Take our fourth issue for example: buzzwords like “fake news” and data transparency led us to the question: Do You Trust Data?, the core topic of Issue 4 of the magazine.
The latest issue’s theme on Activism in Data Visualization came from conversations on the climate crisis, gender equality, the representation of people of color in industries and many other topics.
These topics are very loud and we can’t ignore them. Sometimes we feel like rather than looking for topics, those topics come find us: society right now, it’s so complicated, dense, and overloaded with information like never before.
YBF: Are you looking for social impact?
MCM: Social impact is shaping our work every issue more and more, and that goes beyond the content within the magazine. Just to give you an example, Issue 5 is focused on activism. Not long ago, the magazine used to be packaged in a plastic wrapper. This was a decision we made a couple of years ago, to protect the magazine during storage and shipping but while we were working on the latest issue about activism, we realized we were using single-use plastic too. And we realized that had to stop right then!
Since then, we stopped using plastic wrapper, and from now on each copy of Market Cafe Mag is shipped without the plastic bag. This is just an example of how the magazine makes us think about these issues and pushes us to make a positive change. Change and impact happens in many different ways.
YBF: Once the theme has been selected, what is the process for choosing what projects are in the issue?
MCM: After a quick dance on the chair we put together a list of possible contributors looking at their amazing stories and works. We surely leave some very important people out, but unfortunately we only have a limited number of pages available and sooner or later comes a time where we have to make the cut among the stories that make sense to pair up, and the topics we want to expose!
Sometimes, we deal with time-sensitive issues, for example when we find out about an amazing project that’s about to come out and that doesn’t fit with our print deadline. Unfortunately, we cannot fit everyone in, but we love keeping spreadsheets with long lists of potential contributors and we encourage everyone to get in touch with us if they have an interesting story or project!
We do work around a topic per issue but not the whole magazine is about the chosen topic. Twenty percent of the content is off-topic and on purpose. This is a conscious decision that we took to reflect some variety to the narrative flow.
Oh and let’s not forget variety within the subject. With Issue 5 we wanted to make sure that there were enough social and environmental issues tackled to reflect the nuances of a concept as broad as activism. From personal stories to more or less traditional examples of activism, there are several shades to cover, and we often feel we only just scratch the surface.
YBF: How have things changed over the course of five issues?
MCM: Over five issues and three years of work it’s inevitable that some change can happen, and we think that’s a good thing. The mag has transitioned towards a more heavily curated type of publication. We are so much more married to the idea of creating one narrative around a single subject that changes every issue, the sections of the magazine have a more defined purpose, and the overall flow of reading should feel more cohesive.
YBF: The magazines have a two-color scheme, which are nontraditional magazine colors. Is it difficult to convert the visualization into two colors?
MCM: We get this question a lot, understandably so, as it’s a defining trait of the zine and a key aspect in our production process. As information designers, we know that colors play a very important role in data visualization. The original plan was to print the magazine using Risograph because is a very sustainable printing method and has the two-colors aesthetic which we both liked.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be more complicated than expected so we went for the offset print. Why two colors? First of all, it costs less! We don’t have big budgets and we are micro-publishers by passion so we had to work creatively with limited resources we have. We take great care in refining and perfecting this printing method, based on two-colors; over the years we have created a full documentation to walk through our production process.
Also, there’s another reason for using two colors. We rely on duotone to act as a filter to let the reader look at the artists/designers work in a different way. It’s important people don’t see the magazine just as a portfolio showcase: there are plenty of great websites already doing that and there’s no need to waste paper to do something that it’s easily done online already!
We rely on duotone to act as a filter to let the reader look at the artists/designers work in a different way.
We share a lot of links and references so everyone can just google them and check the work online in the original color. We believe it creates a sort of “Aha!” moment because maybe you didn’t expect the author used that specific color combination for their work. It’s a kind of a little brain trick! The effect is to draw you into that article and isolate you from everything else, all the noise and focus on the words and the shapes.
On a more technical point of view, we always apply a series of “rules” on accent and background colors. We wear our info designers hats when analyzing what colors should mean, and it’s a really fun process! Normally images can either be converted in duotone or be entirely monochromatic. But it gets interesting when we apply two colors on the actual image, as we are working actively with the image to highlight a specific element. This is always done in conjunction with the author so that they’ll always be happy with how we interpret that message.
YBF: Any memories from working on Issue 5?
MCM: Issue 5 is different from the previous ones — even if we say this for every issue that we publish! The best part of this editorial adventure is the never-ending learning process: we discover and iterate our process every time and we keep refining the product to make it better and better. We think this issue is more editorial and more structured than the previous ones. For example, you may notice that we introduced a “visual table of contents” where the articles are displayed by the estimated time of reading. We also started to integrate the content with other sources to enrich the story outside of the author’s information.
YBF: Can you explain more about the selection of cover art?
MCM: The design of the first cover was such a pivotal moment in our journey! The starting point was: “Hey, no one knows us! And if we are a nobody, how can we quickly tell everyone what this magazine is about?” Oh boy, do we like design challenges! After many conversations, sketches, drafts, we decided to write on the cover what the magazine is: so Issue 1 cover reads “This is a zine about data visualization.” As simple as that, no margin for mistakes there! This led to the ritual of creating typographic covers for all next issues, which is now our style.
YBF: What are the future plans for the magazine? Where are your dreams taking you?
MCM: Right now we want to be out there doing activities that combine things we love to do but also sharing all the things we learned along the way and that’s why we recently started to collaborate with universities in London. The type of workshops we do combine the main passions that are at the core of the magazine: print-making, visualizing information, and sharing knowledge. We have come up with a fast-paced series of activities that allow students to go through the creative process that we designed for Market Cafe Mag and involves craft, dataviz, and zine making! It is fast and rough, but it’s all about the process, the creative journey, and editorial thinking applied to data visualization. We find that to be a lot of fun, extremely exciting and we love working with students.
We love the indie nature of our work production, we see ourselves as a micro-label, we like to be independent and to an extent, we know that we need to be able to maintain freedom and fun in the making of the magazine as it is not our main job (unfortunately!).
Meanwhile, the magazine has proved for us to be a platform and a tool that we use to get better at our jobs too. We are getting smarter in the way that we work even between the two of us or with our clients (as we are both freelance information designers in our daily life).
YBF: To find out more about the Market Cafe Mag, check out their links below:
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