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

Luca Gonnelli: Lucas J. Daniel Series in Sustainable Systems

April 20, 2026
6:00-8:00pm CST
Institute of Design (ID) at Illinois Tech
3137 South Federal Street
Chicago, IL 60616
Portrait of Luca Gonnelli with ID modules in bright green

Luca Gonnelli, CEO & Creative Director of Algo, shares his expertise on using technology and motion design to communicate sustainability-related data with clarity.

The eighth annual Lucas J. Daniel Lecture in Sustainable Systems is co-presented by the Institute of Design at Illinois Tech and AIGA Chicago.

About Luca Gonnelli

Luca Gonnelli leads the data visualization studio Algo as CEO & Creative Director, focused on developing generative systems. Algo builds creative tools that turn data into videos, at scale—building more than 605,000 videos in the last year with the belief that “robots and humans can happily coexist and create awesome things together.” Algo specializes in video automation that brings visual synthesis, bold color palettes, and clear concepts to the world of innovation. Luca travels to Chicago from Turin, Italy, an Italian hub for contemporary design where Algo and its sister studio, Illo, one of Europe's most established motion design studios, are headquartered.

Algo and Illo were co-founded by Ilenia Notarangelo and Luca Gonnelli, who are on a mission to keep designers in the driver’s seat in the age of AI and now lead a team of around 30 people. Their work has an ongoing focus on sustainability, helping organizations like The Nature Conservancy, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The New York Times, Google, Apple, Doctors Without Borders, and innovative international startups communicate datasets with both precision and clarity.

A Q&A and discussion with ID faculty members Tomoko Ichikawa and Zach Pino and AIGA Chicago Board Member David Stone, as well as a reception, will follow Luca’s talk.

Register