Each week in class, alongside our slow reading ritual, I ask my design students to blog. Not to show off their final work or polish every sentence, but to do something far more meaningful: pause, reflect, and process.
The prompts are simple and open:
– Respond to a weekly question
– Reflect on the chapter we read
– Share project process, challenges, shifts and sparks
Some weeks it’s about a design breakthrough, other weeks it’s about a block. Sometimes it’s a powerful idea from the books read. Other times, it’s the realisation that the best idea came while waiting for coffee.
Why Blogging Matters for Design Students
- Process Awareness
Blogging helps students slow down and trace their own creative choices. It scaffolds on instincts, challenges assumptions, and builds self-awareness. - Language for Design Thinking
As designers we must be able to explain what we are doing, and why. Blogging gives students the space to develop that voice. - Critical Reflection
Blogging invites students to question: What is this work really saying? How is it shaped by the world around me? What values does it express? - Becoming a Designer with Intention
Most importantly, blogging helps students begin to see themselves as designers. Not just makers of nice things, but as thinkers, observers, and storytellers.
They start to ask important questions; what kind of designer do I want to be? What matters to me? How do I want to contribute to the world through design? - A Living Archive
If done intentionally, by the end of the term, they have hopefully created a personal archive, a map of their thoughts, process, and evolving identity as a designer.
What blogging Is not is that it’s not about sounding smart. It’s not about perfect grammar.
It’s about showing up honestly. It’s a space to connect the dots between what we read, what we make, and who we’re becoming.
So yes, we’re blogging every week. And no, it’s not just an assignment, it’s a creative practice.
