In 2026, after nearly 90 years, the Institute of Design was folded into Illinois Tech's School of Design & Society.
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.

institute
of desiGn
Search

End of Year Show

End of Year Show

ID’s End of Year Show launched in 2012 to highlight student work and give the public a glimpse into the range of issues addressed by ID students. Visitors have a chance to talk to students about their work at the opening or visit the ongoing show anytime during the year.

In 2020 and 2021, the show moved entirely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2022, the show has existed both in-person and online.

Explore the 2025 End of Year Show: In Tension Intention.

End of year show exhibit

Cover image for 2025 EOYS

In Tension Intention | 2025

In Tension Intention explores the transformative power of design in a world charged with both internal and external pressures. This exhibition draws on a broader thematic inquiry, one that resonates through varied approaches by Institute of Design students and prompts the question: what possibilities emerge when we embrace tension as a generative force?

The cover image for the 2024 End of Year Show exhibition is titled

Boundless | 2024

Boundless: Design Beyond Limits reveals a design landscape of interconnected actions, systems, and tensions that can yield infinite possibilities. In charting new courses at an accelerated rate, we can transform today into an imaginative and truly boundless tomorrow.

 

MetaMorphers: Agents of Change

MetaMorphers | 2023

Discover how ID students transform ecosystems and entities from the way they were before, into something new, more impactful, more sensible, and more positive in MetaMorphers.

 

Students walking through the end of year show.
Students looking at projects
View EOYS 2023