After I graduated from high school, I enrolled in the Fergus Falls Community College with the grand plan of studying journalism and mass communication. Around that time, I started a zine, Carothers Brothers, with an old friend and fellow journalism student, Lee Jensen.

Between 1994 and 1996 we printed six issues of our zine, which quickly grew to be a favorite among those involved with the Fargo/Moorhead punk/indie rock scene. Carothers Brothers grew to 52 pages at a time and thanks to an old woman at a local copy center, we printed a maximum of almost 500 copies per issue near the end of our run.

Carothers Brothers was put together by hand, using things like auto parts catalogs and grainy photos for texture. All of the type was handwritten, created via word processor (an actual, physical word processor) and later set with Microsoft Word. We had no idea what we were doing. Carothers Brothers served as a catalyst to get me interested in design.

After graduating from the Fergus Falls Community College, I decided to study advertising/mass communications at Moorhead State University. While at MSU, we published the final two issues of Carothers Brothers.