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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Remembering Industrial Designer and ID Board Member Robert Blaich

Blaich was a standout designer and pioneer of design management

By Andrew Connor

January 6, 2022

Robert Blaich, a celebrated industrial designer and former board member at IIT Institute of Design (ID), passed away in September of 2021 at the age of 91.

Blaich was a pioneer of design management who made an impact early in his 60-year career. In 1953 he began a decades-long tenure at Herman Miller during some of its most innovative and prolific years, working with legendary designers like Charles and Ray Eames; later he joined Philips (then Royal Philips Electronics) as senior managing director of design.

“
Blaich himself was a luminary of industrial design, our Society, and community, whose impact was vast and deeply felt…[his] advocacy for the important role of industrial design in business and around the world inspired us all.
—Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA)

As a design leader, Blaich sought to make design a larger force in business by incorporating design into production and marketing practices to create cohesive and compelling corporate identities. In 1991 he opened his own firm, Blaich Associates, which specialized in design management and strategy.

Blaich became a board member at the Institute of Design in 1995, when the board was first created by former board president Robert Pew.

“
He was always active and engaged, and was especially helpful as we were thinking of alternative locations for the school after the move from LaSalle Boulevard. I viewed him as not just a great designer, but probably the best design manager ever.
—Robert Pew

In its online tribute to the late designer, the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) details more of Blaich’s contributions.

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