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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Tony Bynum

Director of ID Executive Academy and Associate Professor

Portrait of Tony Bynum leaning against a wall

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Tony Bynum is Director of the ID Executive Academy and an Associate Industry Professor in the Graduate School. He has partnered with clients and organizations on their adoption and application of the mindset, principles, and methods of Strategic Design Thinking since the 1990s. Trained in business and design, Tony blends the strategic thinking of an MBA with the human-centered tools and mindset of experience design to help organizations frame and clarify opportunities for purposeful growth and meaningful connection with his client’s users, customers, and communit(ies).

Tony has taught at Rutgers, CEDIM’s School of Design, and Lake Forest College. Tony has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Wisconsin, an MBA from the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, an MDM from the Institute of Design. He has also completed graduate studies in organizational psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

Industry Experience

Tony founded the Northwestern Mutual Design Thinking Center of Excellence at Northwestern Mutual in Milwaukee, WI where he was Principal Senior Director of Experience Design. Tony is also the Owner and President of LYMNL_, a growth and strategy consultancy that partners with organizations to bring clarity, intention, and direction to challenging human-centered opportunities. His clients have included Amazon, Bayer, Bose, BMW, LifeFitness, Motorola, SCJohnson, and Sonos.

News

Why Learning While Doing Is Now a Leadership Imperative

How to Build Organizational Dexterity

Most Companies Won’t Reach 10 Years

Tony Bynum Speaks at Fortune Brainstorm Design in Macau

Introducing the MS in Strategic Design Leadership 

ID Faculty Featured on Recent Podcasts

Featured Work

Reimagining the Journey at Kohl Children’s Museum