IEEE Robots

The new design builds on the recently launched Spectrum brand, sharing its typography and color palette while giving ROBOTS its own identity. ABC Favorit serves as the primary typeface, paired with Ivar for article text. The interface appears in a dark theme by default (with light mode available), and each section features a unique accent color to support navigation and orientation.

With a dual audience of industry professionals and young students, the visual system strikes a balance between technical detail and playful engagement. Images are large and colorful. Hover states are animated and bubbly. Features including robot ratings, leaderboards, and games provide visitors a way to interact with and influence the site.

A key design challenge—and opportunity—was transforming the catalog’s deep well of structured data into an interface that feels intuitive, inviting, and full of possibility. We designed visual patterns that surface metadata throughout the site. Category tags appear directly on robot cards, providing context and guiding users toward broader groupings. From there, filters, search tools, and dynamic sorting options allow visitors to explore patterns across the catalog—like trends by country, use case, or capability. The interface facilitates both focused exploration and casual discovery, revealing the catalog not just as a collection of robots, but as a living dataset with stories to tell.

Groupings of robots are also highlighted on the homepage. A playful “easter egg” feature lets users shuffle through random collections with a click, keeping the experience fresh with every visit.

Cube-like robot called Astrobee is shown floating on the International Space Station
A woman whispers to a small wheeled robot with large green eyes called Vector
Two preteen children are shown building a LEGO robot and controlling it with an iPad
A lanky bi-pedal humanoid walks on a suburban sidewalk while carrying a package

Structured data was key to powering the new ROBOTS site. To manage and deliver content as data, we chose Sanity.io—a flexible headless CMS that treats all content as structured data, enabling powerful, dynamic capabilities not possible with traditional systems.

This flexibility was critical for keeping the site fresh with minimal editorial effort, since the Spectrum team manages ROBOTS only part-time. The homepage can update itself algorithmically, regularly refreshing with new robots and content. Editors can choose to feature specific robots, but the system works independently by pulling from Sanity’s structured data.

We used a similar approach for the robot profile pages. Each robot has a unique set of data—some with more details than others. To handle this, we built an algorithm that dynamically generates each layout based on the data available, ensuring a clean presentation without manual edits. The layout adapts fluidly to different combinations of text, images, videos, and specs.

To make all of this manageable, the editorial team needed a powerful CMS interface. Sanity’s customizable Studio offered just that—with features like version control, drafts, previews, and real-time collaboration. And since it’s built in React, we could also design custom inputs and workflows to fit our exact needs.

The ROBOTS site was built as a Remix app running on Cloudflare Workers, providing high performance and flexibility at the edge. This modern architecture supported both the algorithmic layout system and new, interactive data exploration features.

While the robot catalog had long served as a resource for learning about individual robots, we saw untapped potential in its aggregate data. What if users could explore broader trends—like which countries build the most humanoids, or how often AI appears in robot designs? To unlock this, we made the catalog’s structured data explorable through filtering and sorting tools.

We introduced a new taxonomy system of categories and features, allowing users to dynamically filter, sort, and combine data—revealing patterns and insights across the robotics landscape.

An orange half humanoid submarine robot with gripper hands shines a light underwater
A poster with a grid of robot portraits with the ROBOTS logo across the top
Small, colorful robotic dog is shown standing on a person's hand
Fan of cards showing various robots with their respective names and portraits, with the ROBOTS logo across the top of each card
Fan of cards showing various robots with their respective names and portraits, with the ROBOTS logo across the top of each card, and some cards showing the back of the card with details and specs about each robot
Fan of cards showing various robots with their respective names and portraits, with the ROBOTS logo across the top of each card, and some cards showing the back of the card with details and specs about each robot

The ROBOTS brand can also extend beyond the digital realm, with potential for robot card decks, stickers, and swag.

A green junction box in a public space is shown covered in graffiti and stickers, including one with a shortened BOTS logo showing a gripper robot
Pink sticker with BOTS logo across the top showing a gripper robot squeezing a yellow ball with a smiley face on it
Teal sticker with BOTS logo across the top featuring a portrait of Vector, a small wheeled robot with green eyes
Blue sticker with BOTS logo across the top featuring a portrait of humanoid robot Atlas with a round, blue lamp for its head
Yellow sticker with BOTS logo across the top featuring portrait of humanoid robot Asimo
Orange sticker with BOTS logo across the top featuring a portrait of a black and grey robotic dog
White sticker with BOTS logo across the top featuring a portrait of a robotic hand with three finger-like grippers

For more casual applications, the ROBOTS logotype can be shortened to a playful BOTS.

A billboard at the top of a building showing several robot portraits and the ROBOTS logo
A tote bag with a grid of robot features and category tags, with the ROBOTS logo across the top
A hand holding an iPhone displaying an Instagram profile grid full of images of robots and other ROBOTS branded graphics
A man in a t-shirt with three orange pill-shaped shapes containing the words "beep, bop, boop" and a ROBOTS logo on the sleeve
A blue sticker featuring a portrait of a humanoid robot is shown on a wall covered in graffiti

The visual identity draws directly from the structure of the dataset. Orange tags and grids of robot portraits serve both as navigation tools and as simple, flexible branding elements—on and off screen.

A close-up of the GITAI G1 robots' head highlighting a multitude of cameras and sensors
Two posters with information about two robots is shown on display on a city street