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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IIT Institute of Design counted among most admired graduate industrial design programs

January 16, 2015

IIT Institute of Design was once again recognized as one of the most admired graduate industrial design programs in the 2015 annual survey of design education in the United States by DesignIntelligence. ID was included for its innovative solutions and business focus.

DesignIntelligence, an organization involved in the national graduate and undergraduate rankings of schools focused exclusively on design, compose their rankings on professional practice organizations. Firms were asked, “In your firm’s hiring experience in the past five years, which of the following schools are best preparing students for success in the profession?” These firms were also asked about issues such as how programs rate in teaching various skills.

In addition to the school ranking by professionals, surveys were conducted of chairs and deans from various academic programs and through students in industrial design, architecture, landscape architecture, and interior design through a satisfaction survey about their education.

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