Profile
As the 2006 year came to its end, Sarah Cooper and Nina Gorfer finalized the first of the SEEK Volumes series, their master’s thesis in design, SEEK Volume 01: Iceland, at HDK School of Design and Crafts at Göteborg University, Sweden. It was the beginning of their hybrid design studio SEEK, and a beautifully integrated collaboration. Nina, originally from Austria with previous studies under Zaha Hadid, and Sarah, from the USA, with studies under Sheila Metzner, among others, use a fusion style based on the integration of their past educations and working talents in architecture, art, photography, design, authorship, and fashion.

Communication objective
SEEK Volume 01, a book of nine visual short stories from Iceland, is an investigation into myths and parallel worlds of ghosts, elves, and the hidden people of daily Icelandic life. The first of the SEEK Volumes series, it is a multilayered project that experiments with visual styles, the art of storytelling, and graphical structure. The project plays on an enhancement of mood through design methods focusing on tales never before written down and gathers them in a chronicle of visual short stories. It is a visual narrative that reveals the dichotomies and secrets of country or place: It is an invitation to imagine.

Tools used
Though we used mostly analog methods when gathering both visual and research material for the book, the post-production was an overtly digital and heavily computerized design process. We used Adobe® Photoshop®, InDesign®, and Illustrator® to create an odd and hyper-aesthetic fusion-design book with an analog look and feel. This would have been an impossible project without Adobe Creative Suite®: It is the basis of our style; it is our studio.