How did the school start? We asked the founder and CEO of FORESEE Car Design, Cornelis Steenstra:

"Ever since starting on my first job as car designer at Volvo in 1983, I was frequently asked by interested men and women how they too could become a car designer. After successfully setting up FORESEE Car Design in 1994, during our regular presentations at international motor shows, the same questions kept popping up, people often approaching me with examples of their work for immediate critique. Sometimes real talent would be among them, and in a few cases people that I advised are now themselves car designers or are in dedicated training to become one.

The set-up of our web-site has all but increased the questions about this subject. From all over the world I regularly receive, often very passionate e-mails from people desperate to find out more, to find out if they have what it takes, where they can study and if they can earn a decent living with it. There were so many requests for information that it became impossible for me to reply to each and every one of them in person AND still run my company at the same time.

The set-up of a standardized response mail with some basic information to me seemed to stark a contradiction to the passion with which people wrote to me, to impersonal and basically impolite. This, combined with the realization that not everybody's financial situation allows for studies abroad with high college fees and high cost of living, gave me the idea of setting up the Online Car Design School. With this school I hope people will be able to find out more in depths about the profession of car designer, take some of the myths away, find out what it entails, what talents and knowledge is needed and how to approach potential employers. Whether they become successful is up to the individual, logically, but at least they get to know in advance exactly what they are venturing in to.

In giving the participants highly detailed information on how to approach a new project, analyze its different aspects, illustrate the ideas, how to set up presentation renderings, how to back up innovative concepts with production, engineering and cost-saving logic, the more realistic a decision they can make about their future.

Inevitably there will be people who lose their motivation, who just do not have it in them, but at least they will not have waisted valuable time and money en-route. What I hope, is that there will be the discovery of some real naturals, talent that will clearly make it, people with the ideas and the perseverance, who just need a little push in the right direction. To all, I hope to at least make a difference in giving them a fair chance."

We have, in close cooperation with Mr. Steenstra, developed a program that will cover all areas related to car design. As you may understand, car design is more than just a doodle on the side of a note pad. We believe our program is interesting to both the young individual eager to get started as well as the more developed person wanting to know if they have what it takes to make an important change in life. We also believe this study is interesting to people working in other disciplines within the automotive industry, to better understand how designers think and why they come up with the ideas they do. If a better communication between the different departments is a result of this course, than the overall performance will clearly improve through it.