This phrase encompasses the whole of visual language culture: writing, drawing, describing, recording, editing and communicating. Human modes of communication, which have expanded from physical means such as gestures and facial expressions to dynamic narratives employing new media to add sound and temporal elements, can no longer be bundled together under existing notions of "graphic design". In writing space design, rather than subdividing these modes of communication by domain, we take a broad view of communication, while remaining fully cognizant of our starting point: the descriptive behavior of human beings. Specifically, we now have access to a growing range of options for expression including language, writing, maps, patterns, illustrations, photographs, diagrams, pictograms, sound, video, computer graphics and spatial expression, to each of which any number of approaches are possible: perhaps through historical understanding, or aesthetics, or different expressive techniques. In writing space design, we avoid the easy path of facile imitation and clever tricks to join forces in a quest for things of greater substance.

Here students take up the challenges of working in the digital spaces constructed by computer software and networks, and this totally new design and industry field created with the arrival of an advanced information society. From the viewpoints of cybernetics and eco-cognitive processes, everyday communication could be described as a dynamic process employing a multidimensional system of cognition that includes our sense of touch, images, voice, gestures, sensibilities, thoughts and language to bring about altered states, with people and people, people and objects, people and the environment and people and information acting on each other. Here we conduct studies on the dynamism of information and design from the twin perspectives of multimedia design and interface design. Specifically, this is a field where students use multimedia to create information systems and databases as well as design application software, and computer media and network systems to create interactive communication processes and navigation systems.

As citizens of the modern world we must consider conservation of the environment in global terms as well as the issue of achieving "sustainable progress" that will allow activities such as development and production as well as protect the environment. As a concrete starting point, we contemplate these issues from three perspectives: sign system design, community design, and environmental design involving the processes of creation and disposal, maintaining continuity with the course studies throughout. Sign system design captures the "forms" of how people live, of the dynamism of spaces and places, and of cultural manifestations such as objects and gestures, and organizes these into systems. Community design is the design of loose connections, assembling modes of interaction that transcend generation, nationality and disability in community living. Environmental design contemplates the environment, while questioning the contemporary meaning of making or producing things, as a holistic conception from creation to disposal as waste. By contemplating the environment as consumers as well as designers, students will produce design that turns around the quality of information and changes the way our society works, our lifestyles, and the way we live.