The School of Design aims to develop designers and professionals that possess scientific knowledge about engineering and technology, a profound insight into people and society, along with creative and aesthetic sensibility. The Kyushu Institute of Design, which was Japan's first national design university established in 1968, taught students how effectively technology could be adapted to our lives, adopting the philosophy, "the humanization of technology." This policy continues today even after the merger with Kyushu University in 2003.

Today, circumstances surrounding design are rapidly developing, including progress in IT technology, formation of a new culture brought about by IT technology, innovation of production and distribution systems, diversified lifestyles, and global-scale environmental problems. Objects of design are not only "things", but also extend their reach to events or mechanisms of society. The School of Design cultivates designers full of creativity who have a well-rounded education and a broad and internationally applicable outlook, so as to accurately respond to the challenges of the 21st century.

The School of Design consists of five departments: Environmental Design, Industrial Design, Visual Communication Design, Acoustic Design, and Art and Information Design. Considering people's lives and the world surrounding us from the standpoint of these five fields, we provide an educational program taking full advantage of the following benefits:

1) Comprehensive education: With the aim of attaining an ultimate goal of design, we offer education by associating many disciplines interactively, including the humanities, social sciences, the arts, engineering, and technology.

2) Practical and creative learning methods: We offer many hands-on training opportunities where students can design and create using their own ingenuity, and develop their abilities to plan and produce.

3) International learning environment: We have instituted foreign exchange programs with many design or engineering universities and colleges in the U.S.A., Europe and Asia. The campus also has many foreign students attending full time.

4) Education which takes into account accreditation: We offer an educational program in which students can acquire design-related qualifications, so that they can take advantage of these credentials after graduation.

The first-stage examination screens applicants on the basis of their proficiency in the subjects they have studied in high school, and their basic sensibilities.

The National Center Examination for Universities is used to see if they have acquired the necessary level of understanding in the major subjects in high school.

Individual scholastic ability tests concerning English, mathematics, and science, first of all, determine if their abilities to study scientific subjects meet the highly competitive level required by Kyushu University. Next, we assess their basic sensibilities and expressiveness by a practical test. Here we evaluate applicants basic ability to observe things carefully and express them, instead of focusing on mere eccentricity.

(For information about the second-stage examination and the Admissions Office Examination, please refer to the relevant section for each department.)

Graduates can attempt to acquire certification after graduation.

For instance, the graduates from the Department of Environmental Design can attempt to aquire, qualification as a first-class architect, and the graduates from the Department of Environmental Design and the Department of Industrial Design, qualification as an interior planner.