Digital Detox: Getting Back to Hands-On Design
January 23, 2026
By Malakeh Behbahani • November 2025
As a child growing up in an environment defined by control and conformity, design wasn’t introduced to me as a tool of creativity—it was a necessity for survival.
Every detail of my school experience—uniforms I didn’t choose, walls that seemed to echo commands, a culture of silence and obedience—felt intrusive to my sense of self. I was overstimulated and emotionally overwhelmed. The structure around me was not a scaffold for growth, but a shell I longed to escape.
In the absence of emotional safety, I unconsciously turned to repetition.
At first, it was simple: lines. Loops. Scribbles. I filled the margins of textbooks, the backs of notebooks, and any surface I could find. What began as instinctive, almost compulsive mark-making gradually became a meditative practice. The chaos inside me found order in rhythm.
I wasn’t designing for function. I was designing for psychological release. And then something profound happened. The lines began to evolve.
What once were nervous shapes started to find harmony, symmetry, and flow. They felt infinite. Limitless. A visual space where I wasn’t judged, graded, or silenced. I could keep going forever without fear of making a mistake. There was no final product to compare or critique — only process.
These drawings became my personal visual language—a kind of nonverbal system for mapping safety, calm, and freedom. Over time, I began to realize that this wasn’t just personal expression. It was design, in its rawest form: creating meaning from emotion, structure from chaos, and form from trauma.
Today, I call this practice Infinite Lines — not just because of the visual repetition, but because of what it represents: the endless capacity of design to hold, contain, and transform pain into beauty.
As designers, we often speak about form, function, and utility. But some of us arrive at design not through school or trend, but through survival. And for those of us who do, the work is never just aesthetic — it’s emotional architecture.
About Malakeh Behbahani
Malakeh Behbahani is a Toronto-based illustrator and visual designer. Her work explores memory, migration, and inner freedom through poetic linework and surreal visual storytelling.