Tiziana Alocci and Piero Zagami: "Do we stop, or do we go on?"

Market Cafe Magazine is the magazine about data. Yes, THE magazine, because it is literally the only one out there. As the new issue was introduced at a launching party last week, I sat with the founders - Tiziana and Piero - to ask about the new issue, work and inspiration.

As we are sitting in a hot stitched living room made of three baroque sofas in the middle of the empty hall, the upper floor of the unit five co-working place is still decorated by the balloon shaped as number four.

For anyone who wasn't at the party - what would you say about the new issue?

Piero: As we said at the launch - when we started to craft the new issue, we started to look around us in terms of what's happening in the world and to the perception of data. We realized there was something that was changing really quickly and we are now in a phase where from optimism we're going to skepticism, fear, and mistrust. So we gave this topic a title "Do you trust data?"

Tiziana: All the news about Brexit and how the campaign has been handled and then all the things that went on with Trump and the States, made us think more about the topic of fake news. We think this theme is really important for society right now and that's why we also interviewed many journalists. We've got John from the Financial Times, we've got an investigative journalist from Mexico, which was very interesting because we never stopped in central America. This is something that we are quite proud of - this issue has a lot of diversity in terms of people and location. We also interviewed Jacopo - he works for Code for Africa - we stopped in Kenya and talked about how they work with open data and all the good things they do. (Full names of contributors below the article.)

You are always using only two colours, right? How are the colours reacting to the topic?

Tiziana: The colours of the new issue are dark purple and silver. Usually, the colours of the magazine are quite punchy and bright, but we thought we need colours that were soberer for this issue. We always love to experiment with different colours so we went for metallic ink for the silver that gives a very nice effect and then this bold and punchy purple that works really good.

Piero: When we pick the colours we need something that adds very saturated and dark contrasty hue and then the other colour that works nicely as a more gentle background. It creates nice foreground-background effect especially when we play with duo-tone. This is in general for all the issues.

Two years and four issues behind you. Do you feel like there was something on the way you didn't see coming at the start?

Piero: Yes, we definitely fight with time. We had a very steep start producing a new issue roughly every four months. Then, after issue three we slowed down because of life and freelancing commitment. So this was a challenge, but it also made us realise why we wanna keep doing the magazine. We had to face "Do we stop, or do we go on?" just before the issue four. We realised we want to do it. We want to do it in the right way, but we also don't want to sort of choke ourselves. We want to find the right balance.

And how is it going?

I think we are now doing that, we moved to this space three months ago and it's the first time we have an office, a studio, or like home as well. We feel we fit really well in this slightly underground venue and we can use it for events as well.

"We don't want to choke ourselves.

We want to find the right balance."

We expect people to relax reading our magazine

At Ali Torban's podcast, you said that interviewing and researching for the magazine gives you plenty of inspiration and information. How big is the influence on your other work these days?

Tiziana: We say that the magazine is not just a magazine, it is a platform, a tool. We're interviewing people that might be rare to just bump into, so we have this privileged position to meet them and ask them questions and they share with us the 'behind the scene' of their work. We learn a lot doing that and we want other people feeling as inspired as we do, so that's one of the purposes of the magazine as well.

Piero: Often you interview someone with your research and questions and then the conversation can take a different direction. Sometimes you walk away with more questions, thinking "Ah, we could have asked this question!", or six months later: "Oh, look at what they've done, we could interview them again!" We see these relationships not stopping with the interviews itself, many of these people either become friends or even if they don't, we are still connected to them. We use social media for the magazine specifically to keep all these connections to the contributors. That's why it's fun to see all these people like we did on the launch. We knew so many of them already, so it feels like a big house party but also they're all here to get some inspiration, some more content.

The parts of the magazine are called after different kinds of coffee. Did one of you actually work with coffee before?

Piero: We don't pretend to be coffee experts. We are coffee lovers as you can see right now (shaking the half-empty coffee mug). The moment you're drinking your coffee is a moment when you can take a deep breath or you're relaxing and that's the same thing we expect people will do when they take our magazine up and read. It's not like obsessively scrolling a webpage or bookmarking stuff, sharing it.. you're just taking it in. That's why you can see lots of pictures of the coffee with the magazine on social media, they go hand in hand.

"It's not obsessively scrolling a webpage or bookmarking stuff, sharing it... You're just taking it in."

Tiziana: And it's also a feeling. When I come back home to Italy when I wake up I can smell the coffee from the Moka and it has its very own distinctive aroma that is different from the coffee I make here. I think it's more romantic and it has a kind of meaning. And it is about that feeling of unity, family and that's what we want to share with the magazine and with the people that came to our party as well. The feeling of a safe place, friends, nice atmosphere and so on.

I think there's one last question I wanna ask. Are you planning anything next, now after the big launch, after the big party?

Piero: ...a holiday?

Tiziana: Big holiday! (Both laughing.)

Piero: We have a lot of things we want to get to. We have spent quite some time experimenting with workshops recently, which is something we want to get more into. We enjoy this idea of having other people play with our process, making them thinking about data, constructing the narrative, creating their own little zine in very little time and just let them play with simple data sets they can come up with.

Tiziana: And then of course issue five. We already have in mind who to interview, but you know, everything's gonna be top secret until the day. I think the machine has already started.

Piero: This is generally an interesting year for us, because we're gambling a bit more, we're putting ourselves with the magazine a bit more into the spotlight to see what happens.

Do you think you can make it this year? The issue five?

Both: I think it's gonna be this year. We can put it off.

Tiziana: End of the year, but still... 2019!

(((Issue 4 available to buy online, or in the shops.)))