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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Jenny Niemann

Chair of the ID Advisory Board & President and CEO of Forward Space

Jenny Niemann

Jenny Niemann became Chair of the ID Board of Advisors in 2024. She is also a member of the Illinois Tech Board of Trustees. As President and CEO of Forward Space, Jenny Niemann is responsible for the strategic leadership of the company—providing guidance in support of client needs, establishing goals, defining strategies and providing general oversight of company activities.

Prior to her role with Forward Space, Jenny was CEO of Red Thread, a Steelcase Dealership in New England. Red Thread is a wholly owned subsidiary of Steelcase Inc., the global leader in the furniture industry, providing products, services and insights into the ways people work. With an annual revenue of $3 billion, Steelcase is traded under SCS on the NYSE.

Jenny started her career with Accenture in information systems consulting. She then spent nearly 20 years with Steelcase before moving to Red Thread. Her work experiences at Steelcase included sales/distribution, product marketing/development, operations, and process improvement through information technology and LEAN.

She is a member of the Steelcase, Inc. Board of Directors. Additional board and advisory commitments include Trustee on the board of the Chicago Architecture Center and member of the Women’s Business Development Center advisory committee. She stays involved in the Chicago community through membership in the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) Chicago Chapter, The Economics Club of Chicago and The Chicago Network (Thechicagonetwork.org). She is currently on the YPO Chicago and The Chicago Network boards. She is a member of CoreNet, an organization focused on professional development in the corporate real estate profession.

Jenny earned an MBA from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business. She graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine, with a double major in Mathematics and Economics.

Raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Jenny has lived in Maine, Ohio, Massachusetts and currently lives in Chicago with her husband.