Today we’d like to introduce you to Triet Nguyen.
Hi Triet, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
Hi there, my name is Triet. I’m a media designer and creative producer, and I’m honored to be featured in this column.
My story started in 2006, during my first family trip to Disneyland. I remember getting off the bus, walking with my parents and sister towards the entrance while Be Our Guests was playing. Our first attraction at the park was an immersive 3D show called PhilharMagic. It was a funny short film that’s a compilation of different movies, but during each scene, they had the characters blowing air, water, smells, and all kinds of things at you. As a kid who grew up with VHS and the deepest 90s TV ever, all of that was mind-blowing to me.
There was a moment in the show when Goofy walks around the auditorium to check the backstage area, and his voice literally travels from the left wing to the back of the room where he trips on a cat and then to the right. I remember letting out a big gasp when I realized what was happening right before turning over to my sister and parents, who also lit up with amazement. It was a great family bonding moment.
For a kid who was obsessed with doing DIY fountain shows with hoses in the backyard to impress his parents, that was a core memory. I knew I wanted to be someone who can produce such multi-sensory work that ignite happy moments like that and make people feel the same way I felt sitting in that chair.
Today, I’m humbled to get to wake up and do that every single day, and I have my family in addition to all the friends I’ve made along the way to thank for.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Living in LA, I am blessed and cursed with being among the most talented of creatives. I’m always inspired but also, at times, extremely intimidated by the work from peers I meet at conferences and industry mixers. My parents made it a point to raise me with the mindset of never being professionally contempt (Asians, ya know) and to always learn new things, taking risks wherever I see an opportunity to be great. They even insisted more so, knowing that I chose a path in the entertainment design industry. Such is always easier said than done, of course.
Early in 2019, I took a big risk participating in the prestigious Disney Imaginations design challenge, a competition where you get to design a themed/story-driven attraction given a prompt. My team and I made sure to use everything to our advantage – our experience and knowledge of design in addition to our personal connection with what pushes a design from great to excellent. I found my way back to the time I was blown away by Goofy’s voice circling the room and made sure to have that kind of details elevated in our design. I was stunned to hear when we got selected as a finalist and then went on to winning second place after being invited to come and present on campus at Walt Disney Imagineering.
That event was a revelation for me and definitely shaped how I view risks and opportunities moving forward. It’s not a hyperbole to say that my current job now in game design requires risk-taking on weekly basis, whether it is to propose a new game concept or a simply a logo design. But if I read the records right, every time we take the risk to pursue something new and putting in the work to elevate it (like Goofy and his voice circulating the room and at the Disney competition), it often works out just fine.
People will tell you to take risks, but let me be the one to tell you to not take them for granted. Apply for that job, enter that competition, show up to that audition. You never know what’ll happen!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
The short answer is, I design and produce interactive and experiential media.
The long answer, for better or worse, is I always find it difficult to succinctly summarize the scope of what I do. Every time I feel like I’ve mastered something, there’s an update I need to download, a new software to learn, and new perspective to listen to.
I thrive in critical-making discussions where I get to hear from my clients, my collaborators, and teams on what their visions are for the guest/user experience. Having a multimedia background helps tremendously when you’re designing with different parties of expertise. And when I’m not in those discussions, I love putting those bullet points down into sketches, renders, mock-ups and sprinkle an ample amount of pixie dust and extra-ness on them to make sure they sell.
The balance of these two aspects (creative and communicating) is what made producing (interactive media) so appealing to me, and I’m glad I’ve been privileged to do so professionally for three years now. Each project is a creative balancing act, a different puzzle to solve: taking creative risks but backing it up with data, going big but staying within budget, etc.
Within my off times, I love exercising my experiential crafting skills doing world-building drawings. You can always count on finding me on ProCreate sketching fairytale castles, pirate boat rides, and chocolate factories on any given Sunday morning.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
We’re at a very exciting and equally scary time in entertainment technology and interactive media. When you step through the turnstiles of Disneyland 20 years ago, you’re in a magic kingdom where your troubles are left at the gate. Today, they come with you inside your pocket.
People can check emails, take phone calls, and listen to Beyonce while sailing down a pirate-infested Caribbean. For experiential media, from roller coasters all the way up to a website, everything has to be crafted with room for a mobile device’s participation. How we adapt and keep people engaged inside an experience given the fact that they can access cat videos at any given point is a challenge that I’m scratching my head at, but at the same time find exciting a puzzle to solve.
My designer friends and I tried to take a jab at this with a prototype project called Elemental Dash, where we gave ourselves the prompt to design and illustrate a theme park experience in the age of mobile phones and digital distractions. On that project, we got to play with so many different perspectives that were outside of the box, and I was very proud of what we created in the end. You can read more about the project here: http://trietcreative.com/games
I hope that these challenges will inspire and shape the future designers of newer OMG-Goofy-walked-around-me life-changing experiences.
Contact Info:
- Website: trietcreative.com
- Instagram: @themeparkdesign
- Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/trietcreative
Image Credits
Walt Disney Imagineering
Triet K. Nguyen
Lam Nguyen
Kyle Branch
