Cupsize wasn’t a book. It was a zine (personal, stapled-and-photocopied magazine) that I published with my friend Tara Needham back in the mid-nineties while we were in college. We published five issues between 1994 and 1996.

Self-publishing was a lot more rare and subversive-feeling back then, before blogs came along. We didn’t have blogrolls and we barely had email. We had Factsheet Five, a magazine that reviewed other zines. We were very much part of a community, trading letters and zines with other makers around the world. We were very primitive back then. We used the mail!

Cupsize gave us a place where we could write about anything that inspired us and made us laugh and think. No topic was too big or too small. We wrote about everything from class and feminism to the taste of grape soda. We had no commercial pressures to make money or please an editor, and we were totally free to think out loud on the page.

Sometimes we cut and paste together on Tara’s family’s kitchen table on Long Island, New York, sometimes late at night in the old Conde Nast building, at Self magazine, where I used to work. For a project with very little ambition, we got a remarkable amount of attention, including a write-up in the New York Times.

Because I am so fond of this time in my past and always aspire to get back to that golden era of total creative freedom, I wanted share a little scanned-in Cupsize with you. As soon as I have a moment, I will scan in a few spreads from Cupsize to post here.