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Author, designer and storyteller

Culture Nomads: How giving up everything for a year of travel transformed our family and our lives

Jana Gamble wrote every word and designed every page, before AI entered the picture. It looks like a travel book. It is really about what a good life is made of.

  • Writing
  • Book design
  • Publishing
  • Travel blog
  • Video
  • Website
The front and back covers of Culture Nomads by Jana Gamble, covered in polaroids, passport stamps and postage stamps from a year of travel

The book

A book about the meaning of life.

Jana and her family sold their home, moved into an RV with two teenagers and three dogs, and spent a year on the road and on the water, from the national parks of the United States to a beach in Mexico and a sailboat in French Polynesia.

“Culture Nomads” is not really about travel. It is about well-being, about letting go of status, about parenting teenagers with your eyes open, and about what matters when everything familiar is gone.

  • Meaning and purpose
  • Conscious parenting
  • Well-being
  • Letting go of status
An open spread from Culture Nomads, with a white catamaran at anchor on turquoise water on the left and Chapter 35, written at sea between Bora Bora and Fiji, on the right

The design

Every page, designed by the author.

Jana designed all 520 pages herself, with more than 1,300 images. The look is a travel scrapbook: cut-out lettering for the title and every chapter opener, polaroids, passport stamps and handwritten captions.

QR codes on the spreads open photos and videos from the places on the page, so the book can be read and then visited.

The Introduction spread of Culture Nomads, with polaroids of the family's RV in Mexico and a catamaran in Bora Bora on the left and the opening text on the right
Chapter 24 of Culture Nomads, The Grand Canyon, Arizona, with a full page photograph of the canyon on the left and two polaroids and text on the right
Chapter 29 of Culture Nomads, Glacier National Park, Montana, with a full page photograph of a mountain lake on the left and a row of four instant photos beneath the text on the right
Chapter 34 of Culture Nomads, Be the change you want to see, with a full page photograph of two young people at a picnic table on a beach in Mo'orea, French Polynesia, on the left and a row of three polaroids above the text on the right
Chapter 35 of Culture Nomads, written at sea between Bora Bora and Fiji, with a full page photograph of a white catamaran at anchor on turquoise water and a QR code on the left and two polaroids set into the text on the right

The photographs

A year, one frame at a time.

Ordinary days and extraordinary places, told in the family's own photographs: the RV, the boat, the beaches, the national parks and the dogs, with the people who made the year what it was.

A mosaic of family photographs from the year of travel, showing the RV, sailboats, turquoise water, national parks, beaches and dogs, with the family together in many of them
Jana Gamble smiling in a garden, holding a paperback copy of Culture Nomads

The author

Written, designed and published by Jana.

Jana Gamble wrote “Culture Nomads”, designed every page and published it through Stella Jackson Creative. She then built the blog, the website and the films around it.

The photographs inside are the family's own, taken along the way.

The films

From the road and the water.

Films from the journey, from the book itself to the Pacific crossing, the Grand Canyon and a bus named Thelma.

Crossing the South Pacific, Leg 3: Bora Bora to Fiji (15 days at sea)

The book

On the road

Baja, Mexico

Crossing the South Pacific

Tahiti to Australia

The Culture Nomads compass arrow, in two soft shades of blue

The blog and the channels

Following the journey.

Alongside the book we built culturenomads.travel, the family's travel blog and website. The journey also lives on a YouTube channel full of films from the road and the water, and on Instagram.

WebsiteYouTubeInstagram

The paperback

A year of life, in 520 pages.

“Culture Nomads” is a 520-page paperback, published by Stella Jackson Creative.

PaperbackAmazon Australia
A paperback copy of Culture Nomads by Jana Gamble, covered in polaroids and passport stamps, lying on a round wooden table beside a brass compass

Why it matters to us

We know what a book asks of you.

Writing a book, designing every page and then publishing it takes a lot of care. We bring this care to every author and every brand we work with.

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