I chose the currency redesign to improve. In this project, I think we can show our SDG and the seven principles of design more clearly. One piece of feedback from the pitch is to put a more relevant picture on our designed shirt. To solve this problem, I asked to provide some pictures in the email to the organization, because they experience life on Orchid Island every day, so they may have more pictures that help us. 

Next, I want to connect our mood board to the English class. In English class, we analyze articles and tones in text.  Just like identifying mood and message in literature, we create mood board requires me to carefully choose colors, images, and typography to express different feelings and ideas. It helps me to understand visual design and writing better. 

Comparing my recent mood board to work I've done these past weeks, I think I've grown to use visual design to represent messages better. Before, I chose colors and pictures I liked, but now I think more about how each choice contributes to the overall mood and meaning. This shows that I have improved in both my creativity and my ability to plan and create more thoughtful, cohesive designs. 

One thing I think I need to improve in PBL is time management, especially in a long-term project; sometimes I leave tasks too late or don't plan them, which affects the overall quality of my work. For improvement, I'll break projects into different parts to complete them every day, so I can regularly check my progress and I can stay on track to produce better results. 

The social justice issue our group is focusing on is marine pollution (SDG14). The Tawu people were affected by marine pollution a lot; they didn't make the trash, but suffered the most from this issue. This issue influences their culture and tradition, for example, the flying fish festival. If pollution continues to destroy the ecosystem, then the Tawu people can't catch enough flying fish. 

At the beginning of the semester, I thought graphic design was just about making things look visually appealing, but I didn’t fully understand the deeper thinking behind it. Over the past seven weeks, my opinion has changed because I realized how graphic design can communicate ideas and messages clearly through visual elements. The most important thing I’ve learned is the importance of consistency and purpose in design, and this has helped me create more cohesive projects, like my mood board and brand kit. 

For Organization & Presentation, I made sure my PBL page is clearly structured and easy to navigate by arranging each section in order and labeling everything clearly. I included all required work, such as my mood board, brand kit, and reflections, and checked that each part connects to the overall project. Before finishing, I reviewed my portfolio using the rubric to make sure it looks professional, complete, and polished.

Our group's investigation into the driving question—how graphic design can inspire communities to protect marine life—profoundly shifted our understanding of environmental justice. Initially, we viewed ocean pollution as a minor issue solved by individual choices like avoiding plastic straws. However, our research exposed a deeper systemic failure: massive industrial fishing fleets and agricultural corporations reap high profits while offloading the environmental cleanup and economic burdens of "ghost gear" and toxic runoff onto vulnerable coastal communities. This corporate negligence directly threatens indigenous heritages, such as Taiwan’s traditional Tao flying fish culture. By turning this dense ecological data into the striking layouts of Marine Ma'ataw magazine, we learned that environmentalism is inherently tied to social equity, corporate accountability, and community action. 

For my primary contribution to the magazine, I focused entirely on the visual layout integration, ensuring the dense research text blended cleanly with our graphic assets. During our mock exhibition, we received crucial feedback to make our blurred pictures clearer, fix a spelling typo, include interactive elements, and clearly justify why we chose physical bags over standard shirts or hats. We immediately implemented these changes by upscaling our graphics, proofreading our text, and refining our project pitch to explain that a reusable bag acts as a direct, functional antidote to plastic waste. This project beautifully connected to our humanities and science classes on ecology and cultural preservation, forcing me to translate academic data into digestible infographics. Compared to my past habit of rushing to a finished product without looking back, I now fully embrace iterative design and critique. I have grown as a collaborative group member who welcomes teacher questioning as a tool for refinement. Looking toward the future, I still need to improve my proactive time management during the early prototyping phases, and I plan to set strict internal deadlines for rough drafts so our team has more breathing room for final physical production. 

Over the course of the semester, my understanding of graphic design changed from relying completely on instinct to basing design decisions more on graphic design principles. This helped me feel more confident in my creative process. The application of visual hierarchy techniques and color theory has been very helpful to us, especially when it comes to designing something that would catch the eye. Since we used the same color palette of corporate blues, along with the high-contrast color of red, we achieved the visual clash that is necessary for our theme – an urgent issue of marine pollution. It was through graphic design that we managed to raise awareness about this problem by turning our academic research paper into a visually attractive project that will get our message across. Of all the design choices we have made throughout the project, I am most proud of the final design of the red circular Ma'ataw crest on our exhibition bags.