The Nissan Design Forum and Exhibition - "Imagination Factory" Asian tour continues with its 4th event this year in Malaysia from August 3 - 5. Jointly organised by Nissan Motor Ltd and Edaran Tan Chong Motor Sdn Bhd, the Malaysia event scores a number of "firsts".

Besides being the first ever dedicated automotive design event in this country by a major global brand, the Malaysia event is the first complete collaboration with a national university, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), that offers degree courses in automotive design within the university's Faculty of Art & Design.

Besides hosting the event at their Faculty of Art & Design Auditorium, UiTM's active support in inviting all the universities in the country was the key element in garnering the participation of academics and students from across the country for the workshops and demonstrations held in conjunction with this 3-day event.

33 journalists from the print, TV & online media attended the Malaysian Nissan Design Forum & Exhibition and they consist of automotive, business, lifestyle and even art & design journalists. To date, there have been 27 media reports generated for Malaysia's Nissan Design Forum & Exhibition as at September 30, 2007.

Exclusive interviews with the designers were arranged for Malaysia's top English daily, The Star, and the top Chinese language vernacular daily, Sin Chew Jit Poh, for their respective media's feature write-ups on the event.

Both interviews consistently sought to get deep insights into the designers' careers for their design inspirations and aspirations, and sought to find the secret to becoming a top designer for a major global automotive brand.

There were a total of 5 workshops with interactive demonstrations conducted over the 3-day event with very substantial participation by both students and academics for all the 5 sessions.

It was a great honour for Malaysia to have Masato Inoue, Chief Designer of Nissan's Exploratory Design Department, and Hireen Patel from Nissan Design America in San Diego to conduct the presentations and workshops. They were later joined by Takahiro Tone, the manager of Nissan's Design Strategy Department.

While Mr Inoue presented Nissan's design philosophy with an insight into Nissan Design Centre plus the creative concept behind his creation for the Pivo concept vehicle, Mr Patel presented his inspiration on why he pursued and education and career in automotive design.
Besides the designers, Malaysia also had clay modeling demonstrations conducted by Sadotoshi Kitano and Tokio Gotou from Nissan Design Centre. Selected students from the floor were given an opportunity to have a hands-on feel of clay modeling guided by Mr Gotou.

All the sessions were actively participated with the enthusiastic students posing many questions to the designers during the scheduled Q & A sessions. Design students also brought their sketches and models from their course work for the designers to critique at each of these sessions.

At the request of the students, Hireen Patel entertained the participants of the last 3 workshop sessions with a prolific stage demonstration of free-hand automotive design sketching using just crayons on white paper.