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.

institute
of desiGn
Search

Registration

Registration

Thank you for making Shapeshift remarkable.

The 2025 Shapeshift Summit brought together voices from around the globe to tackle one of our most pressing questions: How do we responsibly shape AI’s impact on design and human culture?

The reach was truly global—participants joined us from:

  • 8 unique countries
  • 18 US states
  • 58 cities

We moved the conversation from Silicon Valley to the rest of the world, and from a focus on the technology itself to focus on its human impact. Thank you for being part of this global movement toward more thoughtful, human-centered AI.

Stay Connected

Sign up for our email list to learn more about ID and upcoming events.

Explore the Program