Brian Black

The mission of the local chapters of IDSA is to facilitate networking, career opportunities and professional development needs of industrial designers throughout their region. As Texas chapter chair I oversaw all programming within the Texas region. Prior to that, as the Houston Vice Chair, my responsibilities included event planning, serving as a liaison for Texas design professionals and interfacing with Texas’ sole Industrial Design program at the University of Houston. Most recently I have moved into a support position for the Colorado chapter as Denver Vice Chair were I plan to continue supporting the professional development of industrial designers in the front range.

is an outdoor lifestyle company who seeks to bring customers closer to the world December 2014 surrounding them. The Cricket, its flagship product, is a towable living space that keeps you dry and off the ground, while maintaining your outdoor experience. My position at TAXA spanned many areas of the business but was primarily focused around design, Cricket, and its production. My concentration was to lead design improvements related to performance and aesthetics, manufacturability, and quality. My biggest achievement at TAXA was playing a major role is taking the Cricket from it's prototype phase to a revenue positive, quality, finished product.
Specifically:
-I developed a 90% resolution CAD model which allowed us to quickly and fully understand design implications on our production line and with our vendors prior to real world testing.
-I re-designed the skeletal structure, consisting of over 100 bent sheet aluminum parts, to reduce cost, increase durability, decrease leak points, and improve the over all aesthetic.
-I led model year change over initiatives which included designing a superior yet less expensive lighting system, creating an outdoor shower which greatly reduced BOM and complexity, and created a Sport premium model to help our dealer network diversify their offerings.

I was part of the product design team whose purpose was to develop in-house innovations based on the feed back from our customers, product testers, and vendors. I became very familiar with construction, use, and design of high performance outdoor gear while communicating new ideas to development heads, sales teams, and manufacturers. I played a major role in creating a design language for their Core Comfort Technology which is now seen in Sierra Design’s Pyro series of sleeping bags.

Webb Motorsports was an aftermarket performance parts manufacturer for British sports cars. September 2007 At Webb, I worked on product development for the MINI and Lotus brands with a focus on track- worthy performance parts. This included campaigning two racecars for the 2006 and 2007 The testing and data acquired was used to shape the future products developed by Webb.