Nicolas Hogios is the head designer of the car industry Toyota in Australia. His skill set involves leading creative design projects, presenting and negotiating design directions with varying specialist groups locally and regionally and anticipating future market trends.

Hogios was born in 1974 in Sydney. His father left Ahladokampos, Greece and went to Australia at the age of 16. His mother, part of the Greek community of Egypt, went to Australia at the age of one.

Nicolas Hogios was six when he sketched his first car, which heralded a life-long passion for automotive design. After graduating in Industrial Design from the University of New South Wales, he earned the “New Designer of the Year” award from Ford and the “Wheels” magazine in 1999.

He started working at Ford as a junior designer in Melbourne. Two years later, he had the position of the senior designer. He helped design Falcon BA XR6 and XR8.

Hogios then worked for Australia Toyota Motor Corp and is still in the same company as Chief Designer – Product Design.

“I always had a desire to work for a Japanese company. Japan has come up with amazing ideas and products, though it was as a massive culture shock. Toyota has a very specific culture, a set of rules almost, called ‘the Toyota way’, and you live by that, you’re trained in that, and have to practice it. It’s a very powerful tool” says Hogios.

Hogios and his 25man team job are to develop cars for Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. He also has to manage designing projects, presentations of the concept cars, as well as the negotiations of the directions his and other Toyota teams will follow in the designing of the models.

His favorite car in designing is the Toyota 86 but putting money aside, he would go for the Lexus LFA. He now drives a V6 Sportivo Camry.