Kai Brach was a web designer in Melbourne who kept building things that disappeared — websites replaced by relaunches, apps killed by new versions. After ten years of freelancing, the ephemeral nature of digital work had worn him down. So in 2012, in the span of three months, he taught himself InDesign and launched Offscreen, a print-only magazine about the people behind technology. He had never worked in print before. He made the entire process public on his blog, including his finances.
The magazine is a one-man operation: Kai edits, designs, publishes, and ships every issue himself, splitting his time between Melbourne and Berlin, where the magazine is printed. Each issue features in-depth interviews with designers, developers, and entrepreneurs — not about their products but about their lives, their doubts, their failures. One promotional email he sent was a 2,000-word essay about being stuck in a creative low. No conversion-optimized marketing speak, just honesty. His readers loved it.
Offscreen describes itself as a buzzword-free zone, and it means it. No growth hacking, no disruption narratives, no inflated success stories. Instead: unpolished human stories, critical perspectives on Big Tech's ethics, and a stubborn insistence that technological progress should advance humanity rather than just shareholder value. The magazine won readers who said things like "it's the first magazine I've read every word, cover to cover, including the ads."
Currently paused but not gone, Offscreen remains proof that one person with a clear vision and a willingness to be transparent can build something the entire tech industry wants to read — on paper, away from the screen.
<a href="https://www.offscreenmag.com/">Visit Offscreen