In 2026, after nearly 90 years, the Institute of Design came under new management. 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
Past Event

Kim Erwin on Communicating the New, Minneapolis

October 3, 2013
5:00-7:00pm CST
bswing
700 Washington Ave N
Minneapolis, MN 55401

For those tasked with innovation, creating anything new—whether a product, service, experience or process—requires more than simply coming up with the best idea. It requires the engagement and  alignment of the many individuals inside organizations who are important to its success.


Kim Erwin calls out the role of communication in the innovation process as a powerful integrative tool to define, accelerate and explain The New in her book Communicating the New and on tour in cities around the world.


Join us to celebrate this milestone in design. IIT Institute of Design together with bswing hosts a lecture and cocktail reception for the design community, friends and alumni of ID.

Register