As the festive cheer chimes in every December along the streets of Orchard, decorative wreaths and baubles hang from the facades of our iconic malls. In 2025, Mighty Jaxx was given an opportunity to add onto the festivities with our very first ever container pop up store, along the bustling stretch of Mandarin Gallery. As a brand leveraging on the element of surprise and excitement, our container was comically inspired by the vibrant and maximalist graphics of slot machines.
With only three weeks of preparation before the containers were to be set up, we were in a rush against time to design a store that encapsulated and complemented the exhilarating thrill of unboxing blind boxes, all while ensuring products could be displayed and upkept with ease, as this pop up event would last for 3 months. For this project, we were able to branch out of our typical brand graphics into shapes and lines that would immediately catch the eye of passersby, and invoke a sense of curiosity. Whispers of "Ooh.. what's that store" and "omg there's hello kitty/luffy from one piece" could be heard across all days of our setup.
The coolest build of this whole store -- the functioning slot machine -- was such a challenge to create! We knew that we wanted a slot machine to be in the store, but had no clue how to implement it physically or digitally. There was a lot of trial and error in conceptualising this, with it turning into an recess wall with a TV mount at some point. Eventually, a lot of research and ideation led to being inspired by the child-friendly "slot machines" (spinning tic-tac-toe game) found in playgrounds all over Singapore. Seeing it in real life for the first time after weeks of working on the build was a really surreal moment.
We also made sure to pepper in small easter eggs in every corner of the store, with one of them being this mirror where friends and families could snap a mighty lucky pic in our store. Such photo ops were essential to getting customers to spread the word about our store without explicitly asking them to do so.
Lastly, no pop up event is complete without its marketing efforts. Infusing the whole slot machine concept with Mighty Jaxx's iconic black and yellow colour scheme, we created a series of collaterals for the marketing team, including freebie stickers, giveaway posters, and KOL X'mas cards.
Overall this was one of the coolest projects I've worked on as a Visual Merchandising Designer in Mighty Jaxx! I got to learn so much about retail store design, lighting as well as branding in this short but challenging project.
My favorite part of working on the Carnival of Surprises was definitely watching the process of the space get set up. From seeing the containers magically pop up at Mandarin Gallery, to setting up the products and samples in the store space, the feeling of satisfaction was insurmountable. To think so many people have walked past and entered the store and formed their own memories in a space I created will always be a super surreal feeling that I'll never get over as a VM designer.
One of the biggest challenges of this project was getting the initial branding and graphics of the slot machine concept down. We went through many stages and phases of graphics in the initial stages of this project, and it took a lot of references and research to finally find a graphic style that perfectly matched the brand story we were trying to impart on passersby. A lot of these graphics were also very experimental as this was the first pop up retail store we were building, and there wasn't really a foundation or past project to work from. Working out the graphical direction with our creative director was a lengthy but necessary process as we were finally able to land on the maximalist and wild graphics used.
As the festive cheer chimes in every December along the streets of Orchard, decorative wreaths and baubles hang from the facades of our iconic malls. In 2025, Mighty Jaxx was given an opportunity to add onto the festivities with our very first ever container pop up store, along the bustling stretch of Mandarin Gallery. As a brand leveraging on the element of surprise and excitement, our container was comically inspired by the vibrant and maximalist graphics of slot machines.
With only three weeks of preparation before the containers were to be set up, we were in a rush against time to design a store that encapsulated and complemented the exhilarating thrill of unboxing blind boxes, all while ensuring products could be displayed and upkept with ease, as this pop up event would last for 3 months. For this project, we were able to branch out of our typical brand graphics into shapes and lines that would immediately catch the eye of passersby, and invoke a sense of curiosity. Whispers of "Ooh.. what's that store" and "omg there's hello kitty/luffy from one piece" could be heard across all days of our setup.
The coolest build of this whole store -- the functioning slot machine -- was such a challenge to create! We knew that we wanted a slot machine to be in the store, but had no clue how to implement it physically or digitally. There was a lot of trial and error in conceptualising this, with it turning into an recess wall with a TV mount at some point. Eventually, a lot of research and ideation led to being inspired by the child-friendly "slot machines" (spinning tic-tac-toe game) found in playgrounds all over Singapore. Seeing it in real life for the first time after weeks of working on the build was a really surreal moment.
We also made sure to pepper in small easter eggs in every corner of the store, with one of them being this mirror where friends and families could snap a mighty lucky pic in our store. Such photo ops were essential to getting customers to spread the word about our store without explicitly asking them to do so.
Lastly, no pop up event is complete without its marketing efforts. Infusing the whole slot machine concept with Mighty Jaxx's iconic black and yellow colour scheme, we created a series of collaterals for the marketing team, including freebie stickers, giveaway posters, and KOL X'mas cards.
Overall this was one of the coolest projects I've worked on as a Visual Merchandising Designer in Mighty Jaxx! I got to learn so much about retail store design, lighting as well as branding in this short but challenging project.
My favorite part of working on the Carnival of Surprises was definitely watching the process of the space get set up. From seeing the containers magically pop up at Mandarin Gallery, to setting up the products and samples in the store space, the feeling of satisfaction was insurmountable. To think so many people have walked past and entered the store and formed their own memories in a space I created will always be a super surreal feeling that I'll never get over as a VM designer.
One of the biggest challenges of this project was getting the initial branding and graphics of the slot machine concept down. We went through many stages and phases of graphics in the initial stages of this project, and it took a lot of references and research to finally find a graphic style that perfectly matched the brand story we were trying to impart on passersby. A lot of these graphics were also very experimental as this was the first pop up retail store we were building, and there wasn't really a foundation or past project to work from. Working out the graphical direction with our creative director was a lengthy but necessary process as we were finally able to land on the maximalist and wild graphics used.