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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ID Faculty Discuss Design’s Next Step in New Book

At ID, We Go Way Beyond Design Thinking

December 7, 2023

Book with the title: Where must design go next

In Where Must Design Go Next?, ID faculty delve into the latest thinking in design through conversations with designer, writer, educator, and Latham fellow Jarrett Fuller.

In this collaborative exploration, ID faculty members engage in six in-depth conversations, addressing contemporary design challenges and discussing how ID navigates them. The book challenges the notion of design elitism, emphasizing a new era of collaboration and openness. As we enter a still-in-progress fourth design era— ID’s “Era in Process” per its ID@85 exhibition—this publication celebrates the transformative power of design and acts as a blueprint for where design might go next.

“
Design is both a noun and a verb, a process and a product, an action and a result.
—Jarrett Fuller

Faculty contributors include Weslynne Ashton, Kim Erwin, Tomoko Ichikawa, Anijo Mathew, Matt Mayfield, John Payne, Zach Pino, Ruth Schmidt, Maura Shea, Carlos Teixeira, and Martin Thaler.

Book editor Jarrett Fuller is an assistant professor of graphic design at North Carolina State University and hosts the design podcast Scratching the Surface.

Where Must Design Go Next? was published December 1, 2023, by ORO Editions.

 

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