The Visualizing Finance Lab at Parsons School of Design announces its upcoming symposium and exhibit Visualizing Finance 1.0: Developing a Common Language. The symposium brings together illustrators, educators, art directors, journalists, and members from the financial community to explore the use of illustration and other visualizations to explain financial concepts.

The symposium opens with a gallery talk analyzing the exhibited works through use of a newly-developed vocabulary encompassing visual-communication, compositional elements, and financial concepts. A panel discussion follows that explores communication between financial professionals and art directors and illustrators. The final portion of the symposium will be a hands-on studio in which participants, led by New York Times financial contributor Carl Richards, create illustrations to explain financial concepts.

Panelists include:

• Joanne Yoong, associate economist, Financial Literacy Center, Rand Corporation
• Minh Uong, art director, New York Times
• Tim Robinson, freelance illustrator
• Jonathan Jarvis, interaction and media designer
• Lucas Bernard, economist, City University of New York

The gallery show exhibits large-scale prints of financial illustrations by prominent artists. The works have appeared in such publications as the Economist, New York Times, Canadian Business, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal. Studio work generated during the October 22 symposium will be added to the exhibit. Utilizing the space outside the gallery, the exhibit will showcase animations, students’ work, and “back-of-the-napkin” (brainstorming) drawings and diagrams.

The event is organized by Aaron Fry, Carol Overby, Jim Osman, and Heico Wesselius of the School of Design Strategies at Parsons and Jennifer Wilson of Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts.

The Visualizing Finance Lab (VFL) is a working group of researchers, artists, and educators at The New School affiliated with Parsons and Eugene Lang College who are interested in the intersection of finance, education, and design. The VFL explores ways in which complex financial situations can be explained through visual representations. The lab aims to develop a vocabulary for describing illustrations of the current financial crisis, in order to create a searchable online database for use by educators, scholars, and professionals. The tools created by the VFL will assist designers and creative professionals to contribute more confidently to discourse on business and economics.