We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Triet Nguyen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Triet, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a fun one – what’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?

I remember a time when I was out of college and applying for jobs. Every morning, I’d wake up, check my email, and day after day I was getting the good ole “thank you for applying. Unfortunately, we’ve decided to move forward with more qualifying candidates for this position”. Having graduated from a challenging four-year program, I thought I had deserve better. Think about this long enough and you start going down this weird rabbit hole: did I choose the right career path? what do other people have that I don’t? am I good enough? etc.

I understood exactly what the problem was though. I had graduated from a interactive media program with an internship in architecture and a portfolio of theatrical and film set design – a hodgepodge of a background. And now, I’m applying to an Associate Art Director role, which requires at least 5 years of painting experience. I’m also applying to a Project Coordinator role, which requires 3 years of executive assistantship, and an Associate Game Designer position which requires 5 years in gaming. As someone from who is interested in interactive, theatre, film, and theme parks, it was hard for me to fit into one mold.

The creative industry, or most of the well-established organizations in Los Angeles and Hollywood are large in size and have incredible histories, and therefore are well-oiled machine with employees contracted to fill every need, down to the smallest bolt. This is how the general belief that one has to be an expert in one and only one field, while artists and designers who are experimental are less valued for they are viewed as risks.

I became a little disappointed and started applying to companies outside of the States, until one day, when I got a call for a Creative Producer position in a gaming company in Saigon. The job description was everything I’d ever hope for it to be: bridging the communication and knowledge between gaming and architecture to produce spatial conscious games. I had to pinch myself. The company was working on a project that aimed to use augmented reality technology to bring games, characters to life in unique architectural spaces. And my heart soared.

Now I know I’m the luckiest person in the world, and in no shape or form qualified to give life advices, but if there’s any moral to this story, it’s definitely to hang on. I was stuck in a place where I didn’t know if my niche of an intersection of practices could fit into any organization, until it did. So keep working on your niche, and hold on!

Triet, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Triet K. Nguyen, I’m an interactive media designer and a creative producer in the games, themed entertainment, and user interface industry. I’m what they called a little digital nomad as I move from one digital medium to another time to time. I design website, user interface. I make short films, animations. And I draw on my little iPad too. But when I’m not doing that I’m known for my role as a Creative Producer currently in mobile gaming, and formerly in theme parks design.

I’ve always been interested in the cross-pollinating of design platforms. This started during my first trip to Disneyland where I was dazzled by all the attractions and shows and how they were the coming together lights, sounds, media, and performances.

In my current role, I work with clients all around the world to design gaming solutions for different business needs and target audience. Every day, I get to problem-solve and create transformative experiences that utilize many design aspects and technologies coming together to form a transformative story. On the side, I also own my design service trietcreative.com where I create websites, user interfaces, drawings, as well as media consultancy for everyone who needs it. And I love it!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I think we’re at a very exciting time in entertainment when there’s a new tool that comes into view almost on a weekly basis. This was not the case a few years ago. As someone who love learning about new creative and design tools, I found myself at a very awkward position where a lot of companies were hiring experts of 5+ years in a specific thing, but never anyone with a “diluted” skillset.

In 2019, my friends and I decided to participate in the Walt Disney Imaginations Competition, which is a design competition where teams compete to conceive an idea for a theme attraction based on a prompt. As the team leader, I was able to put on my multi-media hat and speak to my teammates, who were experts in their own field. I felt so much in my own skin in that role, and we were lucky enough to have won second place at that competition. This ultimately led to me being brought onto Walt Disney Imagineering to work on the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. I had a blast of a time on this team as every day was a new challenge on a very experimental project. From designing show sets to figuring out how that set works with live actors and games, and how those actors and people would move from that space to another…all of it was absolutely crazy in a fun way and I’m so glad I got to participate in that. The project, under great leadership had gone on to win multiple awards, and I’m grateful to be able to say that the games and set pieces I designed are built and used by guests every day on that ship.

Any fun sales or marketing stories?

Sure, I don’t want to give much away as I’m still under NDA for this project but what I can share is that we were tasked to conceive an addition for a very famous children’s edutainment game app. And the task was to figure out a way to incorporate emojis. That was literally the brief: to put emojis into this app. I remember scratching my head and thinking…what? How?

I worked with my team day after day on this, and ultimately arrived at the conclusion that it might cool and perhaps important that a children’s edutainment app should have teachings of emotions. I’m not sure how this is coming off to you, reader, but for a major company: this is a big red flag just waiting to be taken down for a product which main purpose is children’s games – teaching kids about being emotionally healthy. With the reassurance of my team, however, I knew this idea had substance and that it’s a message worth defending.

We took a couple days to think of how we can present this kind of teaching and message to an audience who might not even know what emotions and emojis are, in addition to the secondary audience which are executives who are very protective of their products. We ultimately arrived a cute little story of a robot learning emotions to be a real kid just like the ones playing with our app, taking inspirations from stories in films of heroic children who have taught robots and machines how to feel. We pitched it to the executives, and you could hear a pin drop in that meeting. No one speak for a long time after we concluded our presentation, until one person says “wow!”. Long story short, we are developing that app now within our studio, and I can’t wait for it to come out and be used by the next generation of our future.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://trietcreative.com/
• Instagram: @themeparkdesign
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trietcreative/