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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Past Event

For Whom Are We Making It?

April 27, 2021
12:00-1:00pm CST
Online
Panelists discuss creating new outcomes by working with and for the populations and audiences most affected by their designs.

The novel coronavirus has disproportionately impacted Black and Brown communities around the country—affecting employment, mental health, and education, and highlighting that these systems were not designed with, or for, us all. In this annual event series, ID Instructor Chris Rudd will moderate a conversation with Latham panelists Dr. Rita Nguyen, Assistant Health Officer and Chronic Disease Physician Specialist at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, Assistant Clinical Professor at UCSF, and a founder of the Pacific Free Clinic; Jon Veal, Co-Founder and Creative Director of alt_; and Richard Wallace, Founder and Executive Director of Equity and Transformation (EAT); about how designers are embracing new roles in society to create new outcomes with those most affected by their designs.

Panelists:

More about the Latham series.

About IIT Institute of Design (ID)

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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