GunNomad: an editorial site with a poster on every page

A picture-led magazine for gun enthusiasts — dossiers, field tests, and a journal publishing twice a week — designed to feel like a printed annual and run like a modern website. Live since October 31, 2026.

GunNomad — as visitors see it

The brief

GunNomad is an editorial site about the interesting side of gun culture — the objects, the history, the craft. No store, and no reviews-and-ratings game. The brief was a magazine you can feel: photography first, regular features readers set their week by, and a newsletter — the Dispatch — that carries each new piece out to subscribers.

Goals

• Photography leads — every story opens with a full-bleed plate
• A publishing rhythm readers can set their week by
• Sections with character — Dossiers, Field Tests, Notes, the Armory
• A newsletter signup that feels like joining, not subscribing
• Fast on phones, despite imagery on every page

The challenge

Editorial sites usually have to choose: beautiful and slow, or fast and forgettable. GunNomad's art direction — sunset photography, poster typography, stamps and seals — had to survive contact with real publishing operations: twice-weekly journal entries, a reader quiz, a collection cabinet, and strict image-weight discipline on every page.

The design system

The palette the whole site is built from — every page, card, and graphic drawn from these colors and no others:

Poster-first art direction

Every article opens like a magazine cover: a full-bleed photograph, display type set over it, and the graphic furniture — stamps, seals, rules — kept subordinate to the image, always. The system holds from the homepage hero down to the shortest note, so the whole site reads as one publication, not a stack of pages.

Built for a publishing rhythm

The journal's shelf refreshes twice a week on a standing schedule. Features run on templates, so a new dossier or field test can be composed, illustrated, and published in a single pass — the design system does the consistency work, the editors do the writing.

Joining, not subscribing

The Dispatch signup lives in the masthead and is framed as joining the Nomads — no pop-ups, no exit tricks. Behind it sits the same confirm-and-welcome machinery Sitemage wires up for client sites.

The outcome

GunNomad launched on October 31, 2026 and has published on schedule ever since — proof the studio can run an editorial property end-to-end: art direction, build, publishing operations, newsletter. For a local business the lesson transfers directly: a website with a rhythm beats a website with a ribbon-cutting.

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