Well not much it seems. I am working with a client, GMR Marketing who have a contract with Telus and indirectly the Canadian Football League. During the execution of the contract I had the occasion to talk to a good number of people who where not familiar with the practice of Industrial Design. This especially happened at the launch of the program for the public.
The program was a very interesting idea, the idea of putting the fans first, with the creation of a trophy for the memorialisation of the fans who support Candadian Football by having every one who participates in the program leave their name. The name is to be engraved onto the troply which will ultimately reside in the Candian Football Hall of Fame!
So what was my part in all of this? My client is Press a Penny, the company that makes the Press a Penny token machine. This machine takes a penny and by means of rollers with an image on it, presses the penny through opposing rollers to press a new image onto the metal. In this case one side of the pressed penny will have an image of the Grey Cup, and the other side will have an image of the sponsor for the program, Telus, the cell phone company.
I was invited to attend the opening event at the Terry Fox plaza outside of Gate H at BC Place, home of the BC Lions. That lead to meeting lots of people who where milling about the Telus tent and the display set up to promote the Fan Appreciation Cup and the Penny Press that I had designed for the event. Every one that I talked to, when I told them that I was an Industrial Designer, looked at me in a puzzled way and said “what is that” or “what does an industrial designer do?”