This case study reports on the Digital English project, an experimental course in academic writing piloted with international students on a year-long pre-sessional programme. Inspired by Ulmer's (2003) "Mystory" project and Gauntlett's (2007) "Lego" research, the course concerns itself with the students' exploration of self at a sensitive time of transition across geographical, educational and cultural borders. To facilitate the journey, the project blended learning spaces (online and offline), literacies (home based and academic) and modes (visual and verbal). As the culmination of their engagement with the themes such as digital literacy, visual culture and hypermedia, the learners created a visual artefact to tell their subjective self story. This provided a stimulus for a more objective investigation conducted by peers. The analysis of the final multimodal displays showed that students tend to portray themselves as social beings, yet with individualistic goals in regard to their academic and professional success. In the project evaluation, the students described their learning experience as an enriching challenge, which tentatively shows that there is room for visuality, creativity and identity work in at least certain academic contexts. [For the complete book, "10 Years of the LLAS eLearning Symposium: Case Studies in Good Practice," see ED577046.]