Don Don Donki, the Japanese retail chain known for their broad variety of products, from snacks to shampoo, their catchy jingle that takes forever to get out of your head, and their blue and pink penguin mascots, Donpan and Donko.

Our personal favourite Donki hallmark, the in-store signs.

Equally entertaining, educational and just downright fun, these unique designs make every trip to Donki a visual spectacle.

Today I'm at Orchard Central's Don Don Donki outlet, where I'll be speaking to one of their POP writers to find out the behind-the-scenes process of creating their signature signs.

My name is Brenda, and I'm a senior pop writer here in Donki.

And I've been working here for almost 5 to 6 years.

So this is my work area.

It's a bit messy, but that's what makes it more like a POP area.

Yeah.

So this is where the magic happens.

Yes, all the fun happens also.

Tell me about the brainstorm process, from the time you conceive an idea, all the way to the final product, the signs that we see in the store.

First of all, we have a request form.

So the staff who has an idea for an item or a theme, they come up to us and they can discuss with us, say, hey, what can we do?

And that's how we came up with the ideation.

And then we'll think, what theme should we go along with?

So I'll come up with a template, and after that, we'll draw it.

Or even just a simple writing of what this flavour is.

Yes, because all the products are in Japanese, so we need to let customers know in English, what is this about?

Our POP is like a love letter to customers.

Yeah, that's what we always think it is.

No wonder it's handwritten.

Yes, correct.

So it's really fun to interact with the customers as well.

That is Dong Koo, one of the mascots.

Tell me how you decided to include her in the sign, and what kind of personality does she really have?

I think Dong Koo is mainly used for health and beauty because it stands out more on the girl.

And Dong Koo is actually very low-key compared to our official Dong Pen.

The blue penguin.

So one thing about Dong Koo is that we like to place what we call POP, point of purchase.

So we paste many, many to shout to customers more.

So we can see that it's not just the POP, but also what we call Bobler, or a little bit of information signage.

So it's like a multi-lingual kind of thing.

So it's not just English, but our Chinese customers can also see like, hey, what is this?

All the displays that you see are hand-drawn.

Like even the box over here, it's all hand-drawn, and then we scan it through.

And then we just edit the colours a little bit to make it stand out.

Then we send to print.

We are trained to do a specific what we call donkey style.

When we first come into work with the senior POP writers, we'll actually train the mentees, like how do I do what we call bubble letters, even the price.

Yeah, because this is our donkey style.

Do you have to clear these designs with anyone, or is it mostly you get more of an autonomy to decide what you want to do?

We are just free to design whatever you want.

Of course, we have some restrictions, or like the dos and the don'ts.

Like for example, the colour choices used, like the food and the non-food colours.

I think that also shows the individual POP writer's personality or character.

So for example, like her, even though she's quiet and very dainty, but the work that she brings out, it brings out her character.

Yeah, it's more on the very cool, very mysterious donko vibe.

Yeah, for me, it's like a wow one.

I like to adventure to different things, like even inspiration from the Japan team.

That's how I get more adventure, I'm curious.

Tell me about the theme or concept of each store.

For like the recent stores in the past few years, for example, DelQ, Paribas Quarter, is more of a train theme.

Jewel is like an airport theme.

The Tiong Bahru one, which is more like a rustic, very old, vintage feel.

I've seen that.

How many signs do you do a day?

We'll do 10 to 30 per day, for just the handwritten POPs.

But for bigger signages or bigger displays, we'll do like a half a day thing.

Yeah, but for example, like an A4, that takes about one hour, including the donpen drawing, to the bubble letters, and to the layout.

One hour is still insanely fast.

I know you think it's very slow, because you do it every day.

Yeah.

So sometimes our POP will go missing.

Like one day, it's there.

The day, next day, you'll see it.

Where is it?

It's gone.

Oh, maybe this person really likes the POP a lot, and that's why he steals it.

Or maybe.

Our work really shouts out and brings out.

Or even like, oh, it's something that they want to take it.

And you feel very proud, even for the team.

Like let's say it's done by another POP writer, and you see it's like, you feel very proud of the team.