Say What?
A fun language and culture card game. Now with other design products.
Why Say What?
What started as a Human-Centered Design brief by IDEO to help the local community turned out to be a passion project for me. It was supposed to be an experimental project to make learning Chinese dialects and languages fun. Chinese dialects are not spoken as frequently now, compared to the the older generation in Singapore, as younger folks prefer to speak in English or Mandarin. So we thought to ourselves, how can we encourage the younger generation to take up Chinese dialects and culture and have fun doing it? Why not we gamify learning? And make it real funny, so funny that people who play it snort with laughter.
After few months of game testing, UX, a limited budget, and the help of friends, relatives and research, we created our first card game in Cantonese. We took out our savings to print the first 500 card decks with a Chinese printing company and set up the first pop up stall at MAAD Market at Red Dot Design Museum. At the time, we weren’t sure whether there would be be customers, so we made social media announcements, did free plays with passersby and to our surprise, we managed to sell around 80 pieces that evening.
Next, we were approached by some retailers and also pop up store organisers. Without any experience in retail, we learned as we went along, from negotiating consignment fees to how to dress up displays to dealing with logistics and production, down to the details like the best way to ship to Singapore and how to ask for production discount for bulk prints.
Our Cantonese language card game was a good step for us to test the market. From there, we proceeded to create a Hokkien one. Then, the Singlish card happened thanks to our talk at Creative Mornings, where an audience member from overseas asked us whether will we be creating Singlish card game. We saw the opportunity immediately and without missing a beat, we answered YES! Our card game range has since expanded to include by our Japanese, Mandarin, Bahasa Melayu, Korean and Singapore’s Shiok Food Card Game decks.
So, how is our original Cantonese card game played? First, split into 2 groups. On the table, there will be the blue set of cards (noun cards) and the red set of cards (verb cards). A designated player from a team picks one blue and red card each to form a sentence, and then reads it out. The player’s team mates need to guess what the player is saying. For every correct answer, there will be a point awarded. The player that reads would learn the word or phrase by saying it out loud and the players who guess get to learn the language by listening.
Other languages and cultures design product
While our languages and culture card game is our main business, after setting up more pop ups, we received many requests from our customers about other merchandise, such as stickers, postcards, patches, tote bags, posters and even our (at the time) badly-drawn dolls of our mascots (which were supposed to be makeshift props for one of our pop up events) and were willing to pay $29 for them. Yes, sometimes what our customers want surprise us in the best way possible.
After numerous requests, we thought WHY NOT? and created some sticker packs and other Say What? design products. I was not a trained illustrator to begin with, just a mere graphic designer. But because of this experience, I started to illustrate most of the products, and to have customers and fans telling me that I am talented makes me embarrassed at times because till today, I don’t think I am a good illustrator as there are so many great ones that I admire, both in Singapore and globally.
Collaboration
This is how we began working and collaborating with amazing illustrators that I love and also a super inspiring creative entrepreneur who believes in our product and designs. The first illustrator we collaborated with is Elen Winata, a friend and talented illustrator based in Singapore for the Japanese card game. For the Mandarin card game, we worked with the inspiring Cella Liunic from Jakarta, and her brand Liunic on Things. Next was our Korean card game, where we collaborated with a Korean language teacher that we met via friend, Hyeong Jae Lee. Then, we approached the amazing illustrator Andre Wee to illustrate for us. His illustration style on humans is super quirky and we love his 3D style too. Last but not least, we met Eugenia Yeo at a pop up market fair and got along very well. She suggested that we should collaborate at creating some cool nail art designs with Say What? style and concept for Nodspark. We had so much fun making Oh! Singapore and Nasi Lemak nail art.
Retail and Pop Up Markets
We started with Naiise in Singapore and soon after that we were approached by other retailers in Singapore and a store in Jakarta. Currently, we’re placed in design shops like Gallery & Co, The Farm Store, Cat Socrates, Tokyu Hands to bookstores like Kinokuniya and Times Bookstores, plus other game retailers and quirky design shops. Next we expanded to few stores and cafes in Malaysia in different states - Penang, Kuala Lumpur and Seremban. We’re currently looking at having our products placed in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, as well.
For pop up markets, when we first began, our stall was bare and the display props were more than the products. As we expanded into other languages and products, we have learned the art of HDB: we don’t expand the space, but stack our products higher with display stands and learning the art of modular display and compacting a small space with the best way of showcasing our products.
From a humble pop up stall at MAAD Market, we started to venture into KL and Penang for pop ups. After that, we were invited to showcase our work at Pop Up Asia, Taipei. From there, we also set up our stall in Seoul Illustration Fair in 2019.
Social Media and News Features
Our Say What? products have been featured on local news, magazines and various social platforms. We had interest from language YouTubers checking out our card games, and one of the funniest experiences was our cards was our Singlish cards was read out by an actor while he was doing a Netflix tour in Singapore. We also have people sending it to their favourite YouTubers.
Brand Ambassador and Talks
Apart from managing and creating products for Say What?, we had the privilege to be invited for talks, share of our experiences and journey of creating a fun product that people want to buy. Here we gave a talk at Apple Today, Adobe, Esplanade, showcasing our products to ministers and actress Michelle Yeoh, and shared our business journey at Facebook. We also had sharing sessions to encourage anyone to test out making products and games. Having the mentality of ‘WHY NOT?’ spurs us to test and try products and see how the people react to it.
Summary
We started Say What? as a passion project for 2 years while I was working full time. It was always a project after work or weekends. And after pondering how far will it go and how much can I learn from building a brand and product, I decided to quit my full time job to expand this brand to overseas. We were glad to have fans from overseas and people message us to tell us that they had fun playing our card game.
It was never an easy journey to work on this as a one person entity. There are so many challenges, roadblocks, ups and downs but these has proven to give us so much experiences that we managed to learn so fast on various aspects within few short years. We must admit that are more to be learnt and if there’s a business mentor who is willing to guide and make us their student, we will be glad to accept that.
Check out our website: Say What with Friends Our instagram: saywhatwithfriends
Below here are the summary in snippets of what we have learnt so far.
This project was conceived in 2016
*Even though this business is solely managed by me but I’ve always loved to write as we rather than I.