TOM NGUYEN - PLAYLAB, INC. PORTFOLIO

Public Impression(2021-2025)

A culture clash of crusty East Coast BMX and quality cut-and-sewn garments, blending everything I love through world building, juxtaposition and obsessing over details normal people could care less about.

Interlaced Magazine(2018-2020)

Philadelphia is like the younger sibling everyone overlooks when it comes to East Coast cities. The goal of Interlaced was to highlight all the influential talent this city produced. Collaborators included Saeed Ferguson(AllCapsStudio), Nick Tazza(Formerly Aime Leon Dore), Working on Dying, Jahmir Brown, Tierra Whack and many more.

Backcheck(2020-2024)

Arguably the most influential BMX rider when it comes to street style, Chase reached out to help bring some ideas to life while his corporate projects were on hold in 2020.

Nike Sportswear: City of Neighborhoods(2024)

Over 40 Years ago Nike introduced the Dunk and created hyper localized color combos for the sneaker based off of college basketball teams. In 2024 Nike wanted to bring back that feeling with a new dunk program basing shoes off of major cities and Philadelphia was the first. The Nike Sportswear team flew out to Philly and met up to brainstorm ideas for what this shoe would look like.

A$AP FERG- Plain Jane(2017)

What was supposed to be a day as background talent essentially turned into creative directing a whole music video around NYC. A$AP Ferg saw me filming BMX while his crew was panicking because they forgot to bring their batteries on location, so we decided to bring the DIY ethos to his video which ended up being shot mostly on my VX2100s and film cameras.

Lil Uzi Vert in Manhattan(2021)

It’s not every day you get Facetimed from a random number and it ends up being Lil Uzi Vert telling you to come out to New York so he can learn how to ride BMX. Proper street riding etiquette means hitting up homies when you’re in their city and this day the homie who answered was Nigel Sylvester.

Highsnobiety & I Know Nigo(2021-2024)

After the photos got posted to my Instagram they ended up getting picked up by the likes of Highsnobiety, LilJupiterr, HiddenNY and eventually VictorVictor for publishing rights for the I Know Nigo book.

SAMUTARO

Samutaro also took a liking to the Uzi photos and after that we’ve spent countless hours talking about BMX’s role in hip hop culture over the last decade which led to assisting him on writing pieces over the years and the creation of #SamutaroBiking.

ASAAD: ARE WE… & Off- - - White Sessions(2020)

Some artists spend months if not years developing a sound and image for a project, with Asaad it’s all in the moment. Hanging out in the studio watching Nigoldeneye turned into making music videos featuring the likes of John Ross, Yung Kayo and Bloody Osiris to documenting sessions for his collaborative mixtape with Virgil Abloh.

Additional Work

An assortment of things I’ve done over the years ranging from graphics, product design, photography, music videos and more.