W. Bradford Paley uses computers to create visual displays with the goal of making readable, clear, and engaging expressions of complex data. His visual representations are inspired by the calm, richly layered information in natural scenes. His process applies three perspectives: [1] rendering methods used by fine artists and graphic artists are [2] informed by their possible underpinnings in human perception, then [3] applied to creating narrowly-scoped, almost idiosyncratic representations whose visual semantics are often driven by the real-world metaphors of the experts who know the domains best.
Brad did his first computer graphics in 1973, graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley in 1981, founded Digital Image Design Incorporated (didi.com/brad) in 1982, and started doing financial & statistical data visualization in 1986. He has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art; he created TextArc.org; he is in the ARTPORT collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art; has received multiple grants and awards for both art and design, and his designs are at work every day in the hands of brokers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. He is an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University, and is director of Information Esthetics: a fledgling interdisciplinary group exploring the creation and interpretation of data representations that are both readable and esthetically satisfying.