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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One Hundred Years of Jay Doblin

Carlos Teixeira

Carlos Teixeira Named Charles L. Owen Professor in Design

Midcentury kitchen

Looking Back on Chicago’s Role in the Midcentury Design Movement

101 Things I Learned in Product Design School

Martin Thaler Shares Lessons in Product Design in New Book

Weslynne Ashton

Weslynne Ashton on Teaching Design and Business in the Current Moment

Sarah Buhayar

Sarah Buhayar, Director, Foundation Strategy Office, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Chris Rudd

Chris Rudd Selected as 2021 IMPACT Fellow

Chicago tickets

ID Is a 2020 Innovation by Design Finalist

Google Go MasterChallenge Mockups

ID Creates New Student Practice Experiences with PracticeID

Designing New Ways to Solve Problems in the Civic Sector

Image of MasterChallenges concept winner

MasterChallenges Test ID students with Real-world Design Issues

Andreya Veintimilla and students

Andreya Veintimilla on the Role of Design in Education Innovation

Janice Wong's desk and wall with post its

Janice Wong, Senior Design Researcher at Amazon’s UX Lab

Denis Weil and Matt Mayfield Lay Out ID’s New Curriculum in She Ji

DesignNext

DesignNext: John Cain on the Design of Technology

Andre, Maryam, Santosh, and Roberto

ID’s PhDs Make their Mark

The Future Must be Different from the Past: Embracing an Anti-racist Agenda

Two ID alumni are shaping the future of autonomous driving at Waymo