Muhamad Razif Nasruddin
Director
Kuala Lumpur Design Festival
Muhamad Razif Nasruddin is the Director of Kuala Lumpur Design Festival. Upon graduating with a Diploma in Interior Design from UiTM (2002), he worked as a Jr. Interior Designer at the KL-based Singaporean architecture and interior design firm, AVID Sdn Bhd. He was part of the 4-members team project that received PAM Steel Architecture Award 2006. He then continued his BA (Hons) Interior Architecture, and received accolades from MSID (now MIID) as Best Design Writing and Best Student Design Project in his final year. Razif was also the student president for UiTM Interior Architecture & Design Department, and went on to be selected to represent Malaysia at World Interior Next Generations (WINGs) in 2007, an international interior design workshop, organized by International Federation of Interior Design / Architects in Busan, Korea.
In 2007, he started a design research-led blog called ‘thinklab’. After completing his Bachelor’s Degree, Razif went on to teach at Kolej Bandar Utama (now First City University College) as a tutor and left in 2009 to found a design research organization to expand the blog he started in 2007. In 2008, he partnered with Kuala Lumpur Design Week, as a volunteer and host to programs during the design week. Thinklab, later on organised design-related events, with more than 30+ programs, conference, workshops and events from 2009 until 2014, making it one of the leading Design organizations in Malaysia. In 2012, Razif became the speaker liaison for ICOGRADA (now known as ICO-D) Design Week in Sarawak, which allowed him to network with design leaders around the world.
In 2014, Razif started his own design studio, namely Razif Studio, with a focus on working with cultural projects in Malaysia. One of his more prominent clients are PUSAKA, Maybank Foundation, Bank Pembangunan Malaysia Berhad, Malaysia Timber Industry Board just to list a few. He was also responsible in curating one of the two respectable Mastercarvers in Malaysia, Muhaimin Hasbollah work, to a collection of storytelling art pieces titled, Bahkolektion.
Bahkolektion received great interest from MTIB, and it propelled Razif to work with their product development program called TANGGAM. Through TANGGAM, Razif made a partnership with Yahaya Ibrahim Holdings Group CEO, Shafique Badril to organize Kuala Lumpur Design Festival upon returning from one of the biggest design trade fair events in Finland.
KL Design Festival, now in its second year, aims to educate the public on the importance of design, with strong support from government and design associations in Malaysia.
