design:

(honors) fundamentals

Foundation
A tradition dating back to the Bauhaus origins of the Institute of Design, the Foundation program initiates students without a design background into basic skills of making, sketching, photography, and visual communication and composition. It is a baptism by fire, an experience of intense learning along a steep curve. Foundie alums often describe Foundation as one of the most transformative experiences of their career.

Explaining Process
Pedestal Project Exhibition
Line Plane Volume
Photographic Composition
The Ventra Vending Machine
Weather Data

(reveals)
the unseen

Whether using qualitative or quantitative data as their basis, ID students develop skills of visualization that allow their audiences to see more deeply and act more intelligently. Gaining sufficient traction on abstract or systemic realities that govern a scenario — realities frequently invisible to our immediate sensory experience — is a powerful means to proper analysis and purposeful action.

COPD Medication Education Tool
Design + Data + Behavior
Dynamic Information Through Dynamic Diagrams
Dynamics of the US Men's Basketball System
Food & Healthy Behavior
Ina's Donuts
Language Posters
Latitudes - Oceanic World
Man-made vs Nature-made
Modeling the Revenge of Analog
Nina Rebrand
(Re)Presenting Complexity
Sweet Home Chicago
To Have and to Hold
Video Storytelling

(challenges) &
hopes

Students at ID are encouraged to examine structures that obstruct the realization of equity and justice and to subvert them in their aspiration for a better future. Reflecting upon how design can be intertwined and implicated in these systems, students at ID develop aptitudes for co-design, self-reflection, and critical analysis of the power dynamics underlying their methods of practice.

Activism Coming of Age
Anti-oppressive Tools
Ejido Verde
My Brother's Keeper

(serves)
people

Human beings are navigators: they maneuver their way through city bureaucracies and financial systems, through uncharted territories of parenthood and illness, and through daily choices about what to eat and where to sit (especially during a pandemic). Design supports people in garnering control over their lives as they navigate demanding environments and the challenges of life.

The Art of Remote Facilitation
Equitable Access to Chicago Public Transit for People with Disabilities
Fidelity Crewcrew Cafe
CCAO New Homeowner Gift Box
Chicago Ticketing and Debt Collection Practices: Designed Intervention
Centering Our Values
Dialing the Sense of Control in Retired Life
Harvest
DrivePal
Remmy: A Therapy Teddy
Zenblen Vending Machine
Safety-first
SAUVVI, Part 1
Tactical Design for Pandemics
The American African

(builds)
future things

During their time at ID, students investigate the objects that can support the needs of life in an evolving society. Themes of modularity, flexibility, and personalization intersect with questions of materiality and sustainability as students prototype the things of the future.

Embodied Design
Fundamentals of Product Design
The Giving Tree
Rebuilding Exchange
Small Data

(charts)
paths

For an organization or community to discern its way through volatile times, a diverse and powerful skillset is needed: roadmapping, storytelling, problem-framing, and opportunity identification, to name a few. However, designers also bring a curious, creative, and empathetic mindset that sensitizes them to the human needs and external trends that form the basis of effective strategy.

Advising at ID
A Strategic Plan for USAID Roadmapping
An Intense Study of Knowledge Brokering
DS Smith Supply Cycle Thinking
Flag Calumet Kit
[Franklin] Design Roadmap 2.0
Green Seed's Plug + Play Platform
Learning House
Rebuilding Trust in Media
Twenty-First Century Integrative Thinking
Waste Buster - Waste No More

(provokes) & reimagines

As the single academic discipline that is fundamentally future-looking, design does not limit itself to imagining and executing practical futures. It also has a hand in speculative futures, whereby it shapes, to the extent it can, the concrete future. It does so by problematizing corrosive dynamics in society through clever forms of narration, discourse, and visualization that awaken audiences to a more preferable future. 

6 Chairs and Their Poesy
A Feminist Future
Care-Driven Design Modes for Criminal Justice Reform
Cui Bono
Cultish Idols
Envisioning Sustainable Food Sourcing Solutions
Interspecies Relationships with Pets
Leptailurus forskahlii
Myelin
Plant Babies
Realizing the Rural Permeation of Queer Communities
Strata
Why don't you trust me?
Welcome to Wizendat!
Zingiber’s TABoMB