As a kid, people often tell you to dream big. Go for gold. Shoot for the moon because even if you fail, you'll land amongst the stars. What they don’t tell you is what’s on the dark side of the moon. That too-scared-to-admit-feeling that maybe your dreams are too big for you. That quitting is far easier than sticking with something. That following what everyone else is doing is safer, simpler, and more socially acceptable. And, most of all, that the confidence to chase after a dream is only felt once you’re going for it. For many, these lessons can take a lifetime to learn, if ever at all. On the other hand, people like Trang and Bao—the creative duo behind The Yellows Creative—show that you often have to wander down the wrong paths just long enough to realize the value and beauty of carving your own along the way.
Bao was born in Saigon, but spent most of his childhood in Rạch Giá. Some of his fondest memories are of sitting in front of the television at twelve years old, watching fashion design shows like Project Runway and Next Top Model for hours on end. Seeing designers build collections from scratch served as the initial spark for his future dream. The idea of styling garments and constructing an entire visual world around a concept intrigued him more than anything else. Not yet a teenager, he knew deep down that creative direction was the exact world he wanted to belong to. However, as he explained, even deeper inside was hesitation—a feeling that living out such a dream was too big for him to claim, and in some ways, a subtle denial of how badly he truly wanted it. Throughout his teenage years in Rạch Giá, that fascination for fashion only continued to grow. Though he lacked formal creative training, he spent his adolescence quietly experimenting, sketching ideas, paying close attention to visual details in media, and observing how transformative proper styling could be.
At eighteen, Bao left Rạch Giá and moved to Saigon on his own, carrying little more than a dream of freedom, an education, and the drive to build a life beyond what he had known. Finding his true path, however, didn't happen overnight. Too afraid to leap into the arts right away, he initially started on a more rational route, studying business administration. But within a couple of years, the reality set in: a business track might help him build a stable career, but not the one he dreamt about. For anyone in the middle of a degree, the fear of pivoting to something else—even if it’s what you truly desire—is terrifying. Still, he gave himself permission to start over. “Quitting is easier than starting,” Bao reflects on that turning point. “Doing what everyone else does is way easier because you have reference points—you just follow what came before. But I didn't feel happy doing what other people were doing.”
Pivoting into multimedia design, Bao balanced studying and working simultaneously as a graphic designer to support himself. Early in university, his mindset had been "study first, your dreams can come later"—but that quickly evolved into a simpler question: why not chase your dream now? That period of hustle proved far more transformative than any lecture, showing him that true knowledge only becomes real when put into practice. Crucially, it connected him with a community of like-minded creatives. Surrounding yourself with people also chasing their dreams is one of the most life-changing decisions a person can make. Not only does it reaffirm why you love what you do, but it also means you become part of a community that teaches you new things, lifts you up when you fall, and pulls you to new heights. Along the way, he learned that directing concepts alongside others was vastly more appealing than sitting at a desk creating in isolation, detached from hands-on world-building. Over time, his childhood love for fashion evolved into an obsession with craftsmanship. A stunning visual isn't the result of flashy decoration, he noted, but the accumulation of hundreds of deliberate decisions from silhouettes and textures to precise composition.
Driven to master that craft on physical sets, Bao enrolled at Narc Studio, a production house based in Vietnam and Thailand creating visuals for various brands and artists. While the studio offered invaluable growth alongside talented creatives, its greatest outcome was introducing him to Trang, his future business partner behind The Yellows Creative. Looking back on the winding journey of trial and error that brought him to where he belonged, Bao sums it up simply: “Wrong decisions aren’t always wrong. You have to experience what is wrong to know what is right and where you belong.”
Trang was born and raised in Saigon. From an early age, she was captivated by color and space. The way subtle shifts in an environment could completely alter a person’s mood, thoughts, and emotions fascinated her. However, her own home wasn’t all that colorful. Surrounded by muted interiors, she turned to television shows and YouTube videos on interior design to stoke her curiosity, often watching alongside her mother, who was equally interested. While Bao envisioned himself as a stylist and designer, Trang saw her future leaning toward architecture or spatial design. Over time, that structural and spatial curiosity naturally evolved into visual storytelling through a camera lens, where she could frame and compose spaces in real time. Yet, just like her future business partner, Trang felt her dreams were almost too overwhelming to handle. “In the past, I didn't think I would have a chance in this industry,” Trang recalled of those early years. “I used to think maybe I shouldn't even start.” Even with her growing creative intuition, she still felt unsure if a career in the arts was realistic. Rather than pursuing design in university, she took a more practical path by pursuing a marketing degree.
Trang stuck with marketing through university, but the decision brought growing frustration. While the degree provided a foundation in marketing, it offered no creative outlet, leaving her feeling disconnected from the artistic world she wished to inhabit. Driven by a deep need to create, she used her free time to bridge her passion for spatial design with visual storytelling. Rather than just taking standard pictures, she began designing full visual concepts with a surrealist bent—treating each shoot like an interior set by sourcing props, arranging furniture, and styling subjects to sculpt a specific mood within a space.
Furthermore, realizing her marketing classes would never teach her the hands-on realities of set design or art direction, Trang took her education into her own hands. “When I was studying marketing, I felt like school taught me very little about the actual creative industry,” Trang explains. “I realized quickly that if I wanted to be on set and do real artistic work, I had to find a different path into the field myself.” That realization led her to take a bold leap outside the classroom, applying to work as an art assistant for Ly Trương (known artistically as Foxtly)—a prominent art director, fashion illustrator, and designer based in Saigon.
As Ly Trương’s assistant, Trang gained foundational insights into visual direction. Her biggest takeaway was learning how to build a mood board, specifically how to craft a color palette tailored to different aesthetics and use color to evoke specific emotions. Beyond theory, she also learned the hands-on art of still-life setup, mastering how to thoughtfully compose textures, materials, and props on set. As a result of breaking into the industry as an art assistant, Trang was able to meet new people and get exposed to new opportunities to grow. This is how she learned about the long-term course through Narc Studio, and how she met Bao. Their first encounter was a meeting in an elevator where the two were too shy to introduce themselves. Although a bit awkward at the time, their first impressions of each other were still positive. Trang loved Bao’s distinct fashion style, and Bao was immediately drawn to Trang’s friendly energy. Their shyness didn’t last long though. From that initial elevator ride, the two have been inseparable ever since.
Together at Narc Studio, Bao and Trang shared the same mentor for the entirety of the program. In addition, out of their eight-person cohort, they were the only two selected to stay on and work full-time at the studio for another two years. Under the direction of the studio’s founder, Nguyễn Minh Đức, a creative director who originally studied master's level law in Russia before pivoting to fashion photography, the studio operated at a far more intense level than a standard classroom environment. The non-stop grind of production work resulted in Bao and Trang practically living at the studio.
Under Đức’s guidance, the duo immersed themselves in an interdisciplinary approach that went far beyond learning the basic mechanics of a camera. Their mentor pushed them to study art history, photography, and philosophy to build a rich conceptual foundation for their work. In a practical sense, this training broadened their perspectives, allowing them to decode exactly what a client wanted and translate complex ideas into visual form. Whether it was lighting, framing, posing, or choosing one material over another, they learned to analyze layer by layer why a certain image brings about specific emotions. Yet, once again, instead of relying solely on what their mentor was teaching them, Bao and Trang took it upon themselves to invest in their own education. Rather than passively scrolling on their phones after work, they spent countless hours studying lookbooks, catalogs, campaigns, and editorials. According to them, the result of this relentless self-education on top of their studio work was that when it came time to execute projects, they could treat their models like actors on a movie set, guiding their movements and emotions with thought and care.
In 2024, Bao and Trang decided it was time to take the next step. While they had learned and grown immensely during their time at Narc, the same realization surfaced between projects over and over: when you’re working for someone else, you ultimately have to follow their vision. Even if you see ways to improve a process or refine a detail, your agency is limited when you aren't the one running the studio. After two years of working at Narc, they could no longer deny how much they wanted to build an agency of their own. Leaving meant accepting a difficult road ahead. They could no longer rely on the resources, safety net, or connections Narc provided, so they had to start from scratch and count entirely on themselves. Yet, as daunting as that was, it wasn’t enough of a reason not to try. After stepping away, Bao and Trang took time to celebrate the arrival of 2025 and enjoy the Tết holiday with family. Once the festive dust settled, they got straight to work, spending the following months defining their name, brand identity, core vision, and goals before officially launching The Yellows Creative.
Standing proudly as Vietnamese creatives, Bao and Trang founded The Yellows Creative to celebrate Asian heritage, youth identity, and local culture. Rather than chasing trends, they aim to produce sets that reflect their own lived experiences by capturing the intersection of traditional and modern Asian culture. Beyond taking inspiration from international creative agencies such as BOH Project and Labelhood, both of which push their own version of an Asian-focused aesthetic, Bao and Trang have always synthesized their personal styles with the aim of creating something greater than the sum of their parts. Bao brings a documentarian’s sensibility to their photography, focusing on human emotion to create cinematic storytelling. Instead of treating mood boards as basic aesthetic collages, he uses them alongside deliberate lighting setups to craft heartfelt narrative arcs, ensuring their images feel grounded and alive. Trang, on the other hand, combines her interest in surrealist and futuristic styling with complex 3D integration and interior design. The combination equates to presenting stories of Asian people by incorporating traditional motifs into a futuristic, surrealist setting.
Since launching, The Yellows Creative has produced several in-house projects that reflect their unique vision, most notably Reverie and Border. In Reverie, they explore the feeling of migratory dreaming. Set within a vivid palette of jade green and fuchsia pink—colors deeply rooted in Asian aesthetics—the project captures a blend of atmospheric ambiguity and longing. Their goal was to evoke the experience of constantly drifting between identities, places, and the universal desire to find somewhere that feels like home. In contrast, Border turns inward, drawing inspiration from the philosophy of the Panopticon: a metaphor for a totalitarian system where citizens are perpetually monitored and live in constant paranoia. The title and accompanying visual tension speak to the literal and psychological edge people walk between freedom and control. For Bao and Trang, such passion projects stem from a desire to portray complex emotions that live deep within the human psyche, yet are felt every day.
Beyond their in-house projects, The Yellows Creative has helped produce numerous campaigns for brands including Kotex Vietnam, DMC by Đỗ Mạnh Cường, DEAR JOSE, BAMA, Biti's Hunter, and Bunny Hill Concept. Additionally, Trang and Bao have collaborated with various creative ensembles to construct set designs for musicians, including meyi’s debut EP Me Mới and Juky San’s single Trao Về Anh. Across all their work, the duo intentionally pushes back against commercial trends, prioritizing human emotion and visual concepts rooted in cultural identity. “In the Vietnamese photography industry right now, people are obsessed with a minimalist lifestyle that lacks emotion,” Trang begins, before Bao finishes her train of thought: “Many don’t want to make traditional concepts for young Asian people. The Yellows is a fusion between traditionalism and futurism—it’s something completely different.”
Looking back, it is easy to assume their leap of faith was an obvious choice. Leaving the studio that taught them so much to start their own agency seems natural now, as if they never doubted themselves along the way. But that was far from the truth. Even when pursuing a passion, the impulse to stop still arises. “Actually, I really wanted to quit many times, but I’m still here,” Trang says. “I still get to do real things and meaningful things. And when I accomplish more, every new opportunity makes me happier than I felt in the past.” Bao agrees: “I think a big reason for that comes down to the process we’ve been through. We had the chance to experience so many new things, and along the way, we realized we actually have the capability to execute our vision. After each small success—like seeing a client happy with what we created—we become more confident and realize our dream is growing.”
Chasing after your big dreams is scary. Going for gold means going against the grain. There will be many times when you think to yourself that you don’t have what it takes and it would have been a whole lot easier to take the simpler path. The tricky part, I believe, is that the confidence to shoot for the moon can only be discovered once you’re already in flight. Whether or not you’ll make it, or land on the stars as they say, remains to be seen until the very end. From the perspective of Trang and Bao, if a dream truly belongs to you—even if you wander down the wrong path more than once and make more mistakes than you can count—it will find its way to you. After all, in order to feel like you truly belong somewhere and are doing the right things, it’s often because you’ve experienced what it’s like to feel and do the opposite. In such moments, having a good friend by your side to help steer you forward is one of life’s greatest gifts. Through their work at The Yellows Creative, Trang and Bao hope to be there for others as they are for each other: by creating a space where they can stay curious, keep learning, and tell visual stories that feel personal, different, and honest to who they are.
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