Offscreen Magazine

Offscreen Magazine


by Daniel June 5, 2015

A few years ago while studying at Shillington College, in the midst of my blooming love affair with digital design, a young Melbournian man with a thick German accent came to give a talk at the college. His name was Kai Brach and he was the founder, writer and creator of a print magazine called Offscreen.

The first thing I noticed while the magazine sample was being passed around was how well designed it was. Crisp, minimalist, elegant without being pretentious, and beautiful. It was the type of magazine layout I always wished more mainstream news publications would adopt. Time, The Economist.. and Offscreen. It was, oddly enough, a print-only magazine about web development which featured articles about the lives of the people behind it.

As Kai slightly nervously delivered his presentation I was a little stunned to realise that he had given up an established career in web development to found this magazine. Wasn't web design the future of all humankind? Wasn't print a dead or dying medium? Why give up so much income to start again in a dying medium whose demographic happened to be the very people driving it out of business?

"Offscreen wants to give abstract products a real face by exploring the personal stories that lie behind million-dollar acquisitions, bootstrapped companies and passionate side projects. It’s a window into the lives of people that object established thinking and instead take risks to push forward with the aim to advance themselves, their company or, indeed, humanity through technology." - Kai Brach

Offscreen is an amazing magazine. Not only is it one of the most gracefully laid-out print publications available, it was one of the first periodicals i can recall that really talked about the lives of the people themselves in the newly-glamorised tech industry, and in that way somewhat romanticised the digital age. All this in a magazine which is purposefully made only for print.

It's a special one. A year later, I found myself sitting at General Assembly learning front-end development and still thinking about Kai's inspirational talk.

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