In 2026, after nearly 90 years, the Institute of Design came under new management. This website is an archive of the impactful and inspirational work produced by the ID community before that transition.

László Moholy-Nagy opened the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937, treating design as a discipline that was teachable, testable, and consequential. Nine decades on, its scope had widened from the things people use to the systems they depend on: hospitals, government agencies, classrooms, supply chains, digital platforms. Along the way, ID community members developed the published research, methods, and frameworks that designers rely on every day.

Chief among them is human-centered design: close attention to how people actually live, and advocacy for what that research reveals. It shaped designers who are comfortable with complexity and ambiguity: curious, rigorous, inclusive, and stubbornly optimistic about design's ability to change the systems that shape our lives.

To every one of them, who taught, studied, built, critiqued, and stayed late in the studio: thank you, and keep designing.

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Past Event

careerID: Bruce Mau on Designing Massive Change

October 14, 2020
8:00-9:00am CST
Online
ID Dean Denis Weil and Bruce Mau explore design's role across sectors in "changing everything."

At ID we believe that the future of design practice is about driving sustainable and equitable change. Enter Bruce Mau’s new book MC24: 24 Principles for Designing Massive Change in Your Life and Work. ID Dean Denis Weil welcomes Bruce Mau in a Zoom conversation of particular interest to design students, job seekers, and design practitioners as the two explore design's role across sectors in "changing everything." Drawing from over 20 years' experience in designing massive change, Mau's latest book focuses on such issues as climate change and resource scarcity, healthcare delivery and economic development, food safety and data security, governance and responsible use of technology—a great fit for ID’s expertise in systems thinking and humanity-centered design.

Bruce Mau became an international figure with the publication of his landmark S,M,L,XL, designed and co-authored with Rem Koolhaas. The author of Massive Change and Mau: MC24, Bruce is co-founder of the Bruce Mau Studio and Massive Change Network design collectives based in Chicago.

This talk is part of ID's careerID Confab, a place where practitioners and students come together to learn about current and future roles for designers.

IIT Institute of Design (ID) builds responsible, cooperative, intelligent futures. Founded by László Moholy-Nagy as The New Bauhaus in 1937, ID is known for pioneering human-centered design and systems design. Today ID is home to the only US design school devoted completely to graduate students. But ID is more than a graduate school. ID is an international community of learners and practitioners who are addressing the biggest issues of our time by eliciting a power unique to humans: creativity. Learn more about ID at id.iit.edu.

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