Message design has been oriented toward development and production in the past few decades. While the value of message design has been hightened by the evolution of new communication technology, the growth of its knowledge base is still heavily dependent on other disciplines. Such as cognitive psychology, social psychology, constructivism, organizational theories, system theories and critical theories. There is still a serious lack of basic research on message design itself. If we do not re-conceptualize our understanding of "message" and "design" and search for ways to integrate the two research on message design will not transcend the limits of its status as an applied field. In this paper, the author examines the essence of message, the implications of new communication technology on message content and the implication of media integration on message. To broaden our narrow views of message design, the author synthesizes several major theories of instructional and communication message design and then extends the discussion of instructional/communication message design to that of "design" in general. It is the author's belief that the field of message design could be much enriched by re-conceptualizing the essence of design. In the last section, the author proposes several models to address the multiple relationships between man, media and message. These models could possibly lead message design in a new direction. Overall, the paper tries to uncover the complexity and underlying assumption in message design while attempt to encourage more basic research.