Interview: Mark Santus, Romeo Empire Design

Mark is a managing director of New York’s Romeo Empire Design, and specializes in creating digital content for their corporate clients, who include Trump National Golf Clubs and AT&T. The Romeo group designed the graphical user interface for the new iPhone mobile website, developed by The Weather Channel. Mark explains how he works with copy in such a new and restrictive environment.

My background is marketing, but I’ve been doing this for a long time. I think like a graphic designer, in short bursts of words; as a writer I have to be to the point, avoid jargon, and make it “everyman.” As in signage systems we have to maintain consistency. I’ve developed a brief way of communicating that is not archaic. Writing copy descriptors under graphic icons just comes naturally to me.

As well as full applications, we do a lot of banner ads. We are tightly restricted by current limitations of technology. We can go to a maximum of four kilobytes per file and graphics eat up most of this. It’s color that uses most memory, so we tend to use just one or two. The question is how much space to allocate to copy and how much to the image. There is almost nothing to work with.

We’re trying to get across the most information through the advertisement; visual and contextual components fight for space within tight limitations. We’re working on the “micro-micro-micro” scale here. Copy requirement in a digital environment is often very basic as there is so little space, and our designers usually write the interface copy.

There are readability issues, and the question of how much space we have available. There is always a strong graphic element, but the copy gives description to an advertisement. In the GUI (Graphical User Interface) environment of hand-held applications we have a bit more breathing room and elaborate with copy a bit more. The GUI is quite big, but we tend to use two colors and only a few pixels so it remains clearly readable, and our designers may hand-render a font for clarity. Microsites give us much more room.

We designed and wrote The Weather Channel site to operate on the iPhone. It can’t be accessed through a desktop browser. We always design to the technical constraints of the format, and in this case we could really only describe and explain the functional points. A designer will ask “what is the best thing to call this button?” and the answer isn’t always exactly clear! It offers a two-week forecast of the “temperature,” what it will “feel like,” and how this progresses through a day.

We already use these terminologies on The Weather Channel, which provides the information. Blackberry users want functionality. It’s a tool, and content on the Blackberry originates in need. The application is pushed by data, and it’s one of the top two downloaded mobile applications in the US – it’s very specific, a utility. The copy clarifies the functionality. The microsite for the iPhone is branded The Weather Channel. It’s available to iPhone and iPod touch users at www.weather.com/iphone, and looks and feels like an iPhone.

We’re pioneering a new format – copy is utilitarian now. Some companies can extend reach into product promotion in this format. It’s about the appropriateness of copy and design; it still has to be appealing even if we have just one or two words. Blogs are pushing material out to phones too: increasingly detailed messages and information are being exchanged. The Safari browser should mark the beginnings of new developments as it directly correlates to mobile devices.

When competitors try to differentiate similar products you’ll see more different uses of copy, as messages need greater explanation. We could have a whole screen of just copy, and this now gives us room for a reasonable message. Every 12 months, technological advances give us more room to use copy creatively. The future of digital mobile and web interfaces and messaging will be about banner ads with GIF animations with looped micro-videos. Up until now these have been sloppy, but are becoming more refined now and the animations look fluid. They’re winning the audience’s attention and get good responses.

Increasing screen size of mobile phones gives us opportunities. We can display whole pages, and a page now fills the whole monitor. You’ll see more creative applications, promotions, or cross-promotions, giving users the opportunity to jump off and explore other microsites.