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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Weslynne Ashton Discusses Food Waste on Fox32

Featured on FOX32 Chicago

July 12, 2022

Weslynne on FOX32

Associate Professor Weslynne Ashton was featured on FOX32 Chicago (starts at 2:35 in video of a segment entitled “‘Too Good to Go’ app aims to fight Chicago food waste by finding meal deals.”

Weslynne has a joint appointment at the Institute of Design and the Stuart School of Business. She’s a sustainable systems scientist who focuses on the circular economy and  increasing sustainability and equity in urban food systems. Weslynne’s work in finding ways to reduce wasted food nationally is supported by $15 million in funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF).