SINGAPORE.-/Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- The first international design festival to be held in Singapore will bring zeal, passion and energy from local and international designers through more than 100 events between 9 and 23 November 2005. The festival will comprise conventions, trade exhibitions, country presentations, curated exhibitions, workshops, open houses, product launches, product placements and awards ceremonies.

The Singapore Design Festival is presented by the DesignSingapore Council and partners from both the local and international design community. DesignSingapore Council of Singapore's Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, is the lead public organisation responsible for the development and promotion of design in Singapore.

This first-ever festival aims to develop Singapore into a vibrant, unique international design platform as well as function as a gateway for the world and Asia's design community. With a host of international and Singapore businesses already managing their design operations from this island, this festival will further reinforce Singapore's aspirations to be a leading design city in the world.

Milton Tan, Director of DesignSingapore Council, said: "Singapore has the infrastructure, talent, soul, and passion of a leading design city in Asia Pacific. Singapore is also ideally suited to take on this role in Asia because of its unique and diverse intersection of cultures, businesses, technologies and education."

The most important differentiating factor of the Singapore Design Festival is the focus on the design process and the conceptualisation of ideas, as opposed to the showcase of static end products. In essence the Festival aims to transmute the design culture in Singapore and from around the world into an interactive and "live" presentation of the design process and its end products.

A significant element of the Singapore Design Festival is the multi- faceted nature of the event. There will be country presentations from Asia and Europe. Conferences, featuring prominent international and local creative personalities, include ADASIA 2005 (a premier regional advertising and branding conference), Beyond 2005 (aimed at the creative thought leaders), DesignEDGE (DesignSingapore's festival feature event created by designers for designers) and the International Design Forum (aimed at businesses). The new international Red Dot Award: Design Concept and the regional Young Asian Designers Award ceremonies will inaugurate at this festival.

DesignSingapore's International Advisory Panel will be in town for the Singapore Design Festival. This panel, comprising eight distinguished international experts and leaders in design, was formed to provide a global perspective and strategic guidance to help Singapore create the edge in global design.

The inaugural Singapore Design Festival will be hosting national presentations from India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Members of the panel include Edmund Cheng (Chairman), Christopher Bangle (USA), Terence Conran (UK), Steve Hayden (USA), Toyo Ito (Japan), Toshiyuki Kita (Japan), Dick Powell (UK) and Richard Seymour (UK).

The Singapore Design Festival is one of the four events organised under Singapore's inaugural Creative 2005, which embodies three other events: Creative Youth Exchange, Beyond 2005 and the Asian Media Festival. Creative Singapore 2005 is a primer event that aims to help Singapore realise its potential as a leading creative industries hub.