Jamin Galea Is on a Cookbook Design Mission
“We're creating a resource the industry truly needs.“
Dear readers, how many of you geek out over @booksabout.food on Instagram? [I’m imagining hands shooting up across the Substack cybersphere.] Jamin Galea has been feeding my cookbook design obsession for a few years now, and I’m thrilled to introduce him as the first guest in an ongoing series of “Behind the Design” interviews—where we’ll be meeting people from every corner of the cookbook design world. I really couldn’t have hoped for a better person to kick this off with—thanks, Jamin!
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Jamin Galea is the creative force behind Books About Food (@booksabout.food), Instagram’s most beautifully curated collection of cookbook covers. Galea favors bold and often unusual designs, and I admire his impeccable eye. @booksabout.food is an indispensable resource for me in researching cookbook design—especially in the UK and Europe—and I’m grateful to Galea for sharing each cover and diligently documenting its production details.
Originally from Malta, Galea is a product designer based in South East London. He arrived in England in 2008 to study graphic design at Norwich University of the Arts. Never having cooked for himself before, he bought his first cookbook: Jamie Oliver’s Jamie at Home, which he fondly recalls as having a “dreamy” cloth-bound, embossed, and highly illustrated cover design. This first purchase evolved into an obsession when he discovered the cookbook Five Morsels of Love in a Parisian bookstore, but was unable to find it back home in London. His quest to locate a copy of the book inspired him to post the first cookbook cover on Instagram in 2016, explaining, “Somebody must start documenting these beautiful covers for others to see.”
More than 1,700 covers later, Galea faithfully continues to post on Instagram—lately even including videos of interiors. In 2024, he expanded his efforts by partnering with friend and colleague Sam Garson to launch the Books About Food website. Galea devotes significant energy to maintaining both the Instagram profile and the website, while deftly juggling outside demands on his time (including his day job). The positive response to his work has been hugely validating for him and fuels his ambition to keep expanding Books About Food’s reach.
And perhaps there’s a coffee table book in his future? Let’s jump into the interview and find out more.
Why create an Instagram profile focused on cookbook design?
Cookbooks have evolved into extensions of our personalities—we select the ones that resonate with us and display them prominently in our homes, much like vinyl records once were (and still are). Just as record sleeves inspired an entire generation of graphic designers, I believe cookbooks are having a similar cultural impact.
As a designer, I’m also naturally curious about who creates every piece of visual work I encounter. Cookbooks are unique in that they almost always require collaboration between at least four different creative disciplines. This team effort deserves far more public recognition than it typically receives. Crediting everyone involved in making the books came from my desire to know who was behind the design. I hoped for people to find such a resource useful and that the people who work within this genre feel seen and appropriately credited, even the ones whose work is in the background (or not visual as such).
Do you feel you’ve accomplished the goal of creating a useful cookbook design reference?
Yes, and more than I expected. It fills me with joy every time somebody DMs me to say the Instagram and website have revolutionized how they start book cover projects. The website is being used for moodboarding, research, trend hunting, and—I think more importantly in this economic climate—as a database of people in the industry. Some even messaged to say they got new work via their portfolio page on the Books About Food website. How wonderful.
How do you find the books you feature?
I do a lot of digging online, on publisher websites and industry tools, and news websites. For cookbooks that aren’t new, recommendations on shopping sites are really useful, especially if you’re in a rabbit hole on specific subjects. Trawling through Instagram profiles is also a good source. But finding the books is one thing; deciding if I will feature them or not is a different process altogether.
Tell me about that process—what do you look for when selecting books to share?
I typically feature less commercial books—those not found in supermarkets or heavily promoted by publishers or in big bookshops. I gravitate toward simple, uncluttered covers with confident color blocking, purposeful patterns, clean shapes with an idea baked in, or bold typography.
For illustrated covers, I want personality: hand-rendered details, unexpected elements, or clearly original artwork—not stock imagery. Covers with faces rarely make the cut unless elevated by strong graphic framing, typography, or excellent art direction. Photographic covers need well-composed cropping, clever styling, balanced lighting, and clear visual intent.
What do you think makes a cookbook’s design outstanding?
This is tricky to answer as it’s so subjective. For me, a cookbook that doesn’t necessarily scream “cookbook” is something I look for. Designing something simple is hard, but I love a subtle idea executed with clarity and confidence. It can be something illustrated, graphic, or a photo—some great examples are Hopla, Feuerduft, and Bayrūt.1 Confident typography on a cover really stands out, too.
Who are the authors you admire most and why?
I admired Russell Norman, who sadly passed away in 2023. He was a chef, restaurateur, and author who co-founded the restaurants Polpo and Brutto (which are also fantastic cookbooks). He specialized in Italian food and immersed himself deeply in the culture, region, and people—making sure he was representing them as best as possible. I love individuals who go deep on subjects. Perhaps it’s why I enjoy single-subject cookbooks most.
What trends have you been noticing in current cookbook design?
We’ve gone ALL CAPS on a lot of covers. Once this used to imply shouting, but I think because of its architectural blocky quality, an uppercase title adds a bit of structure to a cover and almost becomes a graphic in itself, like My Cambodia.
Serifs also used to be considered traditional (read: old). But today, type foundries and designers are adding really interesting flourishes to serifs, making them contemporary and stylish. These modern serif typefaces add elegance to covers and section titles, like in A Meal for Two.
Is there a cookbook you’re particularly obsessed with?
I’m totally biased, but Malta—the country I’m originally from. Author Simon Bajada has managed to encapsulate the feeling of my home better than I’ve ever experienced. His storytelling and descriptions perfectly capture the island’s unique spirit and what makes the cuisine special. I’ve been away from my home country for 18 years, and every time I pick up his book, I feel an overwhelming sense of emotion and nostalgia. It helped me reconnect with and feel proud of my identity at a time when I felt I was losing it.
Do you cook from your cookbooks? What are the best meals you’ve cooked from which book(s)?
I do, but not often. They are mostly for admiring, but I do mark up all the recipes I like in each book as soon as I get it. I cooked a sticky tamarind carrot and yogurt recipe from Sophie Wyburd’s Tucking In multiple times. But I sometimes swap the yogurt for whipped feta. Midweek, recipes from Rukmini Iyer’s Roasting Tin series are often on rotation.
What was your goal in launching the Books About Food website?
My goal in launching the website was to create a dedicated digital home for cookbooks. With hundreds released every year, I wanted to provide a curated feed where these beautifully designed books could be showcased in one place, rather than getting lost in the sea of other books on typical online shopping sites.
I also aimed to create a comprehensive database that properly credits all the talented professionals involved in cookbook creation and helps publishers and authors identify who they should work with—including which people collaborate best as teams. This speeds up the entire cookbook creation process.
I hope that by curating and highlighting the best-designed cookbooks, the site is helping elevate the overall design standards of cookbooks across the industry.
What kind of feedback have you received on the website?
The feedback has been great, and I’m amazed at how people are using the website in unintended ways. People say it has changed how they approach designing cookbook covers and researching cookbook design, giving them a shortcut instead of having to trawl the internet for inspiration. The people directory, which now has more than 3,500 profiles, has helped users find new collaborators and see examples of their work in the same place. I’ve also heard from non-visual professionals like copywriters and indexers who appreciate having auto-generated portfolio pages that serve as their personal websites.
Additionally, some publishers don’t credit their in-house teams on imprint pages, and I’ve been told that because I’m publicly sharing who has worked on books, it’s slowly giving publishers reason to move away from this practice and credit everybody appropriately. This is exactly why I wanted to create this platform.
What’s most challenging about running the website? What’s most rewarding?
The most challenging aspects are the time and cost involved in running the website. Balancing the time required to create all the assets, research and credit everyone properly, design new features, and get them built and tested—all while managing our full-time day jobs—is demanding. Behind the scenes, numerous digital services are needed to keep the website functioning and handling our traffic, which adds up to significant monthly costs.
However, what I find most rewarding is the feedback we receive. It keeps us motivated and provides the validation we need, confirming that we’re creating a resource the industry truly needs.
What do you envision for the future of Books About Food?
I’d like for the website to become a comprehensive news site and database that serves as the go-to destination for all cookbook-related news. We’re quite keen for publishers to get much more involved, and we’ve been looking at adding new marketing features to the website so publishers can manage and promote their books directly through the site.
For the Instagram profile, I want to maintain what we have today, but start adding more video content. I’d love to host events and Q&A sessions with creatives specifically focused on design and cookbooks—there are so many topics we could discuss.
Might you want to write your own (cook)book one day?
No, I can barely write answers to these questions. I can’t imagine writing a book. I’m quite experimental with my cooking, but I wouldn’t say my “recipes” are worth sharing. However, I’ve been planning a Books About Food coffee table-type design reference book, kind of like an offline version of the Instagram profile and website. I just need to find the right angle for it—and a few more free hours in the day!
Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you back here in three weeks when we’ll be exploring table of contents designs that won’t make you yawn.
Galea offers further context for his examples: “Hopla: The cover is a tight graphic crop of the half-timbered facade structures found in the Alsace region, and makes for a strikingly unique cover. For those familiar with the architecture, it transports them straight to Alsace. Feuerduft: A familiar sight when cooking outdoors, captured beautifully as a silhouette whilst showing us the context in the background. Bayrut: An elegant illustration spotlighting pottery and fig leaves—both regional symbols—against a serene color palette. The leaves appear to support the vessel like a natural kintsugi, hinting at Beirut’s spirit of resilience and renewal.”
So honoured to be asked for this interview and to be the first in the series Frances. Your on-going support means the world to us! I could burst with happiness right now. Thank you so much!
Wow. I’m really impressed with this, and I love the idea of building a beautiful site that serves such a wonderful professional and portfolio purpose as well. Bravo!