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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Fundamentals of Web Development

Fundamentals of Web Development

Prepares students to confidently build projects with front-end web development tools.

This course is not available for the upcoming semester. Consult with your advisor for similar options.

Objective & Outcomes

In this course, students learn the theory and practice of front-end web design. Theoretical content will primarily focus on website design, with a heavy emphasis on developing sites that conform to standards and are responsive to the needs of practical applications and multiple devices. Hands-on work will help build technical skills, working with HTML, CSS, Javascript, and other web client technologies. Students will learn to use a standard toolset and to follow generally accepted best practices. The course will pay special attention to designing and developing for all users and devices. Discussions about best practices for digital accessibility and related technologies like screen readers and assisted input devices will be reinforced and revisited throughout the course.

At the end of this course, students should be able to envision, evaluate, and communicate interaction design ideas within a web-based environment using industry-standard tools.

Typical Schedule

  • Session 1: History of the Web
  • Session 2: Intro to the Technologies
  • Session 3: HTML Basics (Hypertext Markup Language)
  • Session 4: HTML Forms
  • Session 5: CSS Basics (Cascading Style Sheets)
  • Session 6: CSS Fonts & Floats
  • Session 7: CSS Positions & Layouts
  • Session 8: CSS & Page Layouts
  • Session 9: CSS Animation & Responsive Design
  • Session 10: JavaScript Introduction
  • Session 11: JavaScript Programing Basics
  • Session 12: Google Maps API & Sliders
  • Session 13: Frameworks and SASS

See all MDes Courses