To go along with Billfred’s suggestionhere, I’m starting this thread to collect ideas for trophy designs. This is entirely unofficial, and more of a personal challenge than anything else. Comments are welcomed on any design posted
Here’s the challenge: Come up with a design that you think would:
a) look good in your favorite trophy case (AKA yours)
b) be cheap to make
c) be lightweight to reduce shipping costs
d) be durable
Flex your creative juices, and let’s see what we can come up with. Hopefully, FRC HQ sees some of these ideas. (If not, then AndyMark…)
Starting out, I’ve got one in the attachment. That is not meant to be the FIRST logo, BTW–it’s meant to be a representation of the shapes. The base is left very generic for simplicity. Material is something durable and ideally somewhat translucent.
Or maybe even better, could be shipped in a couple of smaller pieces and assembled quickly and easily at the event prior to the awards ceremony(s). This would allow teams to also disassemble them for more easy shipment for the journey home. I know teams have received some flack from TSA trying to board and airplane with sharp pointy trophies and I couldn’t imagine putting them in checked baggage for fear of breaking.
Or, we’ll go with the generic requirement:
e) Easy to transport in luggage on an airplane by a team
e1) Also easy to transport with the field (or make locally)
I like both Alex’s and Chuck’s ideas, and came up with this rough, not-even-remotely-to-scale sketch on my iPad. (In my mind, the visible parts of each stage of the trophy would be roughly equal.)
What I envision are three extruded shapes nested inside each other–square and round tubing is abundant, and finding triangular extrusion can’t be THAT hard. The exact sizes of the tubes can be adjusted to suit the significance of the award, and the trophy could be made to (dis)assemble by use of set screws in the back; wrapped in tissue paper to protect the finish, the pieces should be able to nest in the square to make shipping them more compact. (As for finish, I’d want some expert opinions–anodizing anything in white appears prohibitively complex, and thus likely expensive if my Google-fu is strong.)
The blue bottom member would carry the FRC logo, while the award name and event could be engraved on the red top piece (perhaps turned 90 degrees for space). I believe engraving the red piece would make the trophy more visually appealing, though if cost savings ruled that out I’d suggest to rotate the square 45 degrees and engrave the FRC logo and award on adjacent sides. To save FIRST from wasting a bunch of engraved pieces on relatively rare four-team alliances, the policy becomes that the alternate team and the team it replaced leave the venue that day with one trophy each; the money FIRST spends on shipping the second trophy to those two teams will almost certainly be less if history is any indication.
I encourage anyone who actually knows what they’re doing to chime in with feedback.
Here’s a pretty simple design I whipped up fairly quickly. Basically it comes in two parts, the upright and the base. Easily disassembled for transport/storage. I envision that this would be a good trophy for the “minor” awards (i.e. anything but Chairman’s, Regional Champion, maybe EI as well?). Both parts would probably be made in a mold (it’d be pretty difficult to engrave the logo and text). I feel like it’d be more durable (and less pointy!) than the current award design, and could probably survive a drop without any parts breaking off.
Fun challenge Eric! I might make some more designs later.
Not FRC, but Team 604 made these trophies a few years ago for FLL teams the NorCal Championship. (The puzzles, water droplet, etc. reflected the FLL challenge theme for those two years).
I think the Winner style trophies are perfect if they were made as big as before.
The technical award trophies having just a single base piece looks nice, but maybe with a better FIRST logo on top it would be better. I’d love if the trophies looked like their respective awards - Motorola Quality being a beautiful, polished brushed aluminium FIRST logo on stands, Xerox Creativity being something completely off the wall, etc.
I have always thought the “Chisel Point”](http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/papers/2382)would make for a good trophy, but I don’t know if I would want it for the “general” awards or the “winners” trophy either.
Related question: Do the regional committees pay for the trophies right now? If they did, it might fly…but if the money is coming out of the FRC budget in Manchester, I imagine economies of scale might kick in.
I suspect that they could get it done for a lot cheaper than the numbers that were floated earlier. I also see a competition starting between regionals to have the most desired trophy.
