hospitable automation

Cliff and Paul came to me with a mission - they wanted to make service robots less of a techno-utopian dream but a real solution to very real challenges faced by UK hospitality sector. Most tech companies obsess over the tech - Hospitable Automation obsess over people. They’ve supported numerous local hospitality businesses and built a team passionate about technology. The team wanted to shift public perception of robots away from fear and turn it towards excitement about the potential they offer. Especially during the times when the world moves fast and people are more cautious with their spending.

Robots in the UK are seen as cold far away tech - unpredictable, always listening, and makings its way to replace the people at work. Hospitable Automation came in looking to cut through the bias - with a carefully selected robot range, rigorously tested, and a process built around making adoption easy. To help bring the robots home I looked to visual cues we already associate with home - the pub. It served as inspiration for the warm but vibrant colour palette that balances seriousness with excitement. The logo followed suit - the mascot is somewhere between a plush monster and a robot with responsive eyes, and arms ready to help.For typography I chose a humanist typeface that adds warmth, one you would expect to see in a hotel rather than a tech company.

The ‘people before tech’ angle informed the photography direction and website content strategy. I worked with the team to describe the process, tension points and questions and this formed how the pages were structured. The design itself was inspired by structure you would typically see in hotels and cafes, with smooth edges, editorial headings and cards that flow and stack.