Stemming from a collaborative research project ‘designing, writing’, this article outlines preliminary findings to the various ways that design practices and design processes contextualize and explicate an intellectual proposition, i.e. how design contributes to advancing knowledge. The overall aim of the research investigation is to disseminate current understanding and best practice on the relationships between designing and writing and their mutual interest in speculation, expression and research. While most discussions around this topic adopt one of two (often polarized) distinct positions – the written text as sole authority and a design object’s capacity to be read as a cultural artefact – our investigation looks at various media of design articulation directly linked to design as a system of inquiry including but not limited to diaries, diagrams and choreographic notation and comics. These media expose a potential to ‘write’ through design and expand design research as non-linear, theoretical and yet practical tools.