FatBoy Zine is a personal cookbook and cultural diary in the shape of a mini magazine

FatBoy Zine is a blistering mix of things: a cookbook, a zine and creator Christopher O’Leary’s diary. Hong Kong born, then based in the Philippines, Liverpool and finally London, Christopher shares culture with a lot of the world. But, when he suffered the loss of a close family member, he felt that he lost a piece of his heritage and identity – so he started writing to try remember recipes they had made. Using grief as the main ingredient, Christopher poured his energy into transforming it into something positive.

Each issue is based on either a geographic place or an abstract theme, allowing Christopher and collaborators to explore diverse stories through recipes and interviews with chefs and artists. But the aesthetic glue that holds all of these together is always changing, like a customised recipe changed over time. The newest issue of FatBoy is a glittering explosion of colour, visually representing how it feels to taste something amazing. Everything is neon, vibrant and digitally inspired with interesting portraits of 3D models. It looks like a cookbook from the future.

Issue 6 is about multiple heritages. “It’s a complex theme with a lot of nuance, so finding chefs who have strong opinions was key. Equally finding artists like Kushagra (the issue’s cover artist) who could express multiple heritages using sculpture, texture and light was more interesting than relying on photography, as everyone’s relationship to their heritages is different,” says Christopher.

Differing from other food publications, each issue is unabashed and personal. 6 issues in, it has become a type of shared diary between artists and foodies. The zine format especially lends FatBoy a different flavour to the gargantuan cookbooks found in everyone’s grandmother’s kitchen. “The original thinking when I picked the zine format was that, as much as I love the design and effort of cookbooks, their size can make them unwieldy and precious in the kitchen,” says Christopher. “And I didn’t want to rely on a digital publication as I’m a huge fan of print – even though I cook mostly from my phone. So a zine was the perfect balance of something precious and un-precious.”

“I especially love designing the names for the dishes. They’re like little movie posters on the page. You can put so much detail into how they’re presented to make someone feel like they understand the vibe of the dish,” says Christopher. “A lot of emphasis of course gets put on the photography, but people can underestimate the title of a dish and how it’s displayed. Each one is different, so why bother standardising?”

Christopher loves building out “little worlds” for each issue through typeface and colour combos as well as visual easter eggs. “Sometimes it’s not just about collaborator’s work but how it’s incorporated. Like in our last issue which was all about Taiwan, I asked the talented Ze Lai (aka Silky Rabbit) to essentially draw all over the zine, and react to the layouts I made and mess with them,” says Christopher. “Because the theme spoke a lot about Taiwan’s incredibly expressive and experimental art scene. It felt right not containing her work, but instead letting it take over.”

Whereas in Issue 3, an issue about Hong Kong which revolved around flat, ceramic patterns and took internet memes as inspiration, this newest issue is about an amalgamation of gradients and geometry, clashing soft and structured shapes – opposing elements that somehow come together beautifully. The emphasis on collaboration invites this type of welcome chaos, the aesthetic of multiple heritage coming together not to compliment each other, but sitting comfortably in differences – together, but not apart.