TELUS and OCAD present “Hard Cell: How can wireless

technology better suit the needs of Canadians in 2009?”

OCAD students design next generation of cell phones

Toronto, September 15, 2008 — TELUS and the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD) are proud to present “Hard Cell: How can wireless technology better suit the needs of Canadians in 2009?”, a unique design exhibition at the XPACE Cultural Centre in Toronto. Third-year students from OCAD’s Industrial Design program have risen to the challenge of designing handsets that anticipate the future needs of Canadian cell phone users. The exhibit will display 25 cutting-edge concepts for a potential new TELUS handset.

This is the second year in which OCAD students have studied the real-life uses of wireless devices, and the intuitive and functional design of their components (e.g., keys, screens, materials, and interfaces). The student designer who demonstrated the strongest design abilities last year was offered a four-month internship at TELUS this year.

“Teamwork, problem solving, an integrated design process, and the application of leading-edge technology are fundamental elements of what we teach at OCAD,” says Jules Goss, Chair of the university’s Industrial Design program. “This collaboration with TELUS is a great example of how our students work with industry to both apply and further develop their knowledge and expertise.”

Stephen Ospalak, TELUS’ vice-president of Mobile and Future Friendly Home Devices, says, “This great partnership between two Canadian leaders, one in art and design education and the other in innovative products and services, is set to contribute to the global design community. We are proud to help Canadian youth grow their talents in creative innovation through this program and through our support of OCAD.”

To see the exhibit, please visit:

Hard Cell
September 16 to 20, 2008
Opening reception: Friday, September 19, 7 to 10 p.m.
XPACE Cultural Centre
58 Ossington Avenue (north of Queen Street West), Toronto
416 849-2864 | www.xpace.info

About TELUS
TELUS (TSX: T, T.A; NYSE: TU) is a leading national telecommunications company in Canada, with $9.4 billion of annual revenue and 11.4 million customer connections including 5.8 million wireless subscribers, 4.3 million wireline network access lines and 1.2 million Internet subscribers. TELUS provides a wide range of communications products and services including data, Internet protocol (IP), voice, entertainment and video. In support of our philosophy to give where we live, TELUS, our team members and alumni have contributed $113 million to charitable and not-for-profit organizations and volunteered more than 2.1 million hours of service to local communities since 2000. Nine TELUS Community Boards across Canada lead our local philanthropic initiatives. For more information about TELUS, please visit telus.com.

About the Ontario College of Art & Design (OCAD)
The Ontario College of Art & Design (www.ocad.ca) is Canada’s “university of the imagination.” OCAD is dedicated to art and design education, practice and research and to knowledge and invention across a wide range of disciplines. The university is building on its traditional, studio-based strengths, adding new approaches to learning that champion cross-disciplinarity, collaboration and the integration of emerging technologies. In the Age of Imagination, OCAD community members will be uniquely qualified to act as catalysts for the next advances in culture, technology and quality of life for all Canadians.

About the XPACE Cultural Centre
XPACE is a non-profit artist- and student-run centre dedicated making space for emerging art and design.

Our goal is to build a bridge between art and design students and their professional counterparts by offering a platform in which they may exhibit their works and be externally recognized, which in turn promotes relevant programming that instigates public discourse and propels the development of contemporary art and design.

All OCAD students are members of XPACE Cultural Centre, which is a membership driven organization governed by The OCAD Student Union Board of Directors.

XPACE’s past programming initiatives have focused on the discourse surrounding the exhibition of art and design. Our diverse programming introduces varying established communities to one another through participation-oriented projects that provide space for discussion, as well as provoke and encourage questioning from the audience in order to contribute to a space, established within the art community, that is uniquely experimental. This allows for a dynamic art space that questions, as it continues to reinvent, the cultural and artistic expectations of a gallery. XPACE considers professional art and design practices to be continually unfolding and that the emphasis on the formative and developmental areas will create further accessibility and diversify our audience.