Iterative Work is an independent design studio from Tanner Woodford, founder of the Design Museum of Chicago
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Iterative Work helps people tell resonant stories through narrative-driven design, installations, and projects. The studio builds brand systems, environmental graphics, websites, exhibitions, books, and murals. Each one is designed to be maintained by the people who commissioned it
For fourteen years, Tanner led the Design Museum of Chicago, building one of the city's most accessible cultural institutions. He turned it from a pop-up into an organization that commissioned over 74,000 square feet of public art, displayed more than 10,000 student artworks, and remained free to the public for 3,700 days
As an artist, he paints optimistic, typographic, large-scale murals permanently installed across Chicago and beyond. As a designer and educator, he has taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and lectured widely on design, storytelling, and civic practice. In 2020, he was appointed to the City of Chicago's Cultural Advisory Council
His approach is grounded, generous, precise, optimistic, and durable. Every project is an opportunity to make meaning, spark dialogue, and build community
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Made in Chicago
He believes that design is not a luxury or an abstraction, but a public good — something lived, shared, debated and experienced across the city
Vasia Rigou
Newcity
What Tanner Woodford Built
at the Design Museum of Chicago
No one in the local design community works harder or hustles as consistently to connect people, ideas and systems
Adam Kallish
Tropisms
Museums as Products of the Mind
