Meet Haley Nelson | Senior Product Designer and Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Haley Nelson and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Haley, other than deciding to work for yourself, what else do you think played a pivotal role in your story?
Though it may come as a surprise to some, I don’t work for myself full-time and I never have. For most of my career, I’ve worked as a Product Designer building and designing applications for tools in the martech, fintech, and aviation space. Photography has always been a passion project that I pursued during my free time (mainly nights and weekends) and, eventually, I reached a crossroads where trying to do it all just didn’t make sense anymore. I decided to close my photography business to focus on my career in product and to give myself a chance to fall back in love with photography as a form of self-expression. That has been the single most important decision of my career. Now, I create art with personal meaning that is devoid of the pressure of running a successful business. I can explore the medium of photography more freely, I can fail often, and experiment in a risk-free way.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
The art I create is an amalgamation of external influences, powerful emotions, and years of experimentation to learn how I can bend the rules to achieve something that truly captures the emotion of a moment. The freedom to explore and create freely without the pressure of running a business allows me to redefine and reclaim failure as part of my creative process rather than seeing it as a roadblock. As an artist, I can’t think of anything more exciting than no longer fearing failure and I think that’s the most impactful thing I’ve learned along my journey as a creative. Failure is just another rung on the ladder to get to where you want to be. The important part of my story is that there’s life for an artist outside of burnout and running a business where the act of simply creating art is enough.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how to answer this question because I’ve never been to Phoenix. 🙁

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are a lot of people who influenced my direction as an artist, both family and friends. My success as an artist belongs to them because, without their encouragement, I likely wouldn’t be where I am today.

Website: https://www.haley-nelson.com/

Image Credits
Haley Nelson