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

Master of Design Methods meet-up with Denis Weil

July 12, 2017
5:00-7:00pm CST
The Ruin Daily
328 South Jefferson Street
Chicago, IL 60661

Denis Weil, dean, will be hosting a happy hour for incoming and prospective Master of Design Methods students. Join us to learn how this degree can help you bring design to the center of your work and to meet others within the ID community, including fellow prospective students, current students, ID faculty and staff.

Register