The archive · Brand & Identity · Strategic decision · 2022
COLLINS resharpens IIT Institute of Design into a brand that can evolve
For its 85th anniversary COLLINS rewrote the school's purpose as 'creating generations of evolutionaries' with an identity built to evolve.
IIT Institute of Design · COLLINS
What it had to solve
For 85 years the Institute of Design had pioneered landmark approaches — human-centred, systems and behavioural design — but the side effect of all that innovation was a loss of clarity about what the school was for. On the eve of its 85th anniversary, COLLINS was invited to define its worldview and resharpen its purpose.
How it works
Chicago's Institute of Design, founded in 1937 out of the Bauhaus and now part of Illinois Institute of Technology, spent 85 years pioneering human-centred, systems and behavioural design. The side effect of so much innovation was a loss of clarity: prospective students and business partners still read design as styling, unaware it could transform companies and improve communities.
COLLINS was invited to define the school's worldview and resharpen its purpose. The studio rejected the framing of designers as 'revolutionaries' and positioned the Institute around evolution, writing the purpose 'creating generations of evolutionaries' and giving the institution a new voice.
The visual language followed the same logic. Drawing on the geometric experiments of Moholy-Nagy and the design systems of Jay Doblin — both central figures in the school's own history — COLLINS built six foundational structures able to transform from abstract shapes into words and images, with motion revealing the variables behind each word.
Unveiled for the anniversary year, the evolving identity gave a school that teaches change a brand that changes too, and the work was collected in the D&AD Annual 2023 as a model of purpose-led institutional branding.
Why it lands
- The identity matches the institution's own claim: a school of evolution gets a brand that visibly evolves, so the form proves the idea.
- Starting from worldview and purpose rather than a logo brief let the design system grow out of the school's actual method and history.
- Borrowing structures from the school's own Bauhaus lineage made the new brand feel inherited rather than imported.
- Framing evolution instead of revolution reframed design for outsiders as a force for transforming what is into what should be.
What it did
The rebrand gave the school a purpose and an identity that can constantly evolve, reframing design for students and partners as a force that transforms what is into what should be; the work was collected in the D&AD Annual 2023.
What you can take
An institution whose whole method is change cannot stand on a fixed logo: make the identity a system that visibly evolves, so the brand itself demonstrates the discipline it represents.
Since then
The rebrand accompanied the Institute of Design's 85th anniversary year and was collected in the D&AD Annual 2023, joining COLLINS's body of institutional identities. The purpose statement 'creating generations of evolutionaries' and the evolving visual system became the reference for how a school whose discipline is change can brand itself without standing still.
Sources
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card