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.

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Eric Larson

Chairman and Co-CEO, Tilia Holdings

Eric Larson has spent over thirty years as an investor in private companies. He is the cofounder of three private equity firms (First Chicago Equity Capital, Linden Capital Partners, Safe Foods International Holdings) and is embarked on a fourth (Tilia) devoted to food, agronomy and environmental health. For the past two decades, he has focused on investments and effective governance in healthcare and life science companies.

Mr. Larson and his wife are active in several science-based organizations. Mr. Larson’s activities include: The National Geographic (International Council of Advisors), the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Leadership Council and member of the Nutrition Roundtable), Illinois Institute of Technology (Trustee), the Center for Higher Ambition Leadership (Fellow) and the Gaples Institute (member of the Advisory Board). Mr. Larson has an undergraduate degree in biology from Harvard University, a graduate degree in design from the University of Michigan, and a graduate degree in business from the University of Chicago.