Brand identity + product + motion

Mote: a brand for one personal AI that lives in four small robots and wakes up in whichever one you need

Mote is one personal AI that lives in four small robots and moves between them. There is a desk rover that carries and bins, a clip-on camera for your bag strap, a keycap for your keyboard and a bedside dock. Only the body Mote is in shows its eyes and a small lime light, so you can see which one is listening. We built it from scratch: the name, a studio world of chalk-white bodies, the dotted-M logo and its construction film, the phone app that moves Mote between bodies, the face on each body, and the launch on posters, a metro lightbox, a bus, a launch stage, boxes, a bag and a tee.

Project: An Alterra Studio project: we built the company's brand, product and launch from scratch
Stage: Consumer AI hardware, seed stage
Services: Naming, world and key art, logo and its construction film, the body-switcher app and Today view, the face on every body, posters, out-of-home, packaging and merch, animated board
Tools: Imagine (our in-house design app), Nano Banana Pro, GPT Image, Seedance, HyperFrames

Brief

The problem and the brief

Eight of ten funded AI device homepages promise to remember for you, and none shows the AI doing a job on the first screen.

Mote is one personal AI that lives in a family of four small robots and moves between them: a desk rover, a clip-on camera, a keycap and a bedside dock. Only the body Mote is in has eyes and a lime light. Its buyer is an adult who already pays for an AI assistant and wants it on the desk, not in a tab.

The brief, in a founder's words: "Every AI gadget promises a second brain; a buyer who has watched AI pins get returned wants to see the device do a real job and know when it's listening, and our homepage only shows it looking pretty."

What a buyer has already seen

The research

~7,000

of about 10,000 AI pins sold were still with their buyers by August 2024. Between May and August, more were returned than bought.

Source: 9to5Mac, on The Verge's report, 2024

of people who use consumer AI pay for it.

Source: Menlo Ventures, 2025

71%

of US adults say more AI will make their personal information less secure.

Source: Pew Research Center, 2026

Three doubts a buyer brings to the product page

BuyerA cute robot is fun for a week, but I need it to do real jobs.
SkepticIt does what my phone already does, so it'll end up in a drawer.
BuyerI can't tell when it's listening, so I won't wear it or leave it on my desk.

Logic

The strategy: four bodies, one face, and only one awake

The board is the family. Every body is asleep except one: the one with white pixel eyes and a lime light. Every few seconds the eyes jump to the next body. Lime only ever means Mote is here.

Doubt 1 · Real jobs?A cute robot is fun for a week, but I need it to do real jobs.
A day of jobs, one line per body
Today lists what each body did, newest first, and each body wears the face it showed at the time: Rover binned 3 paper scraps at 2:14 pm, Keycap ran two 25-minute focus timers, Clip spotted the 8:12 bus, Dock woke you at 7:00.
Only 3% of people who use consumer AI pay for it. A buyer in that 3% wants to see a day of work before paying for a body.
Doubt 2 · Why not my phone?It does what my phone already does, so it'll end up in a drawer.
Your phone picks the body. The body does the job.
The app shows which body Mote is awake in and what the other three are doing. Drag the eyes from Keycap to Rover: Rover wakes, Keycap goes dark, and the island says Rover is on its way. The jobs happen on the desk, the strap and the nightstand, where a phone isn't.
Of about 10,000 AI pins sold in 2024, only about 7,000 were still with their buyers by August. A device has to do what the phone in your pocket can't.
Doubt 3 · Is it listening?I can't tell when it's listening, so I won't wear it or leave it on my desk.
The eyes are where Mote is listening
Only the body Mote is in shows eyes and a lime light; the others are dark glass. The face is also the interface: a 25:00 focus timer, a full bin, an incoming call, then the eyes again, drawn in dots on the same glass.
71% of US adults think more AI will make their personal information less secure. A buyer should be able to see which body is listening from across the room.

System

The design system

Chalk and fog for the bodies and the studio. Graphite for type. Black glass for every face. Lime shows only on the body Mote is in.

Chalk #EEEDE9The shells, the app's panels
Fog #D9D8D4The studio ground
Graphite #2A2C2EType, the lockup, the second colourway
Glass #0C0D0EEvery face, asleep
Pixel white #F4F6F2The eyes, and the type on each face
Lime #C6F03AMote is here: the light on the one body that's awake

The world. One mind, many bodies. Chalk-white bodies in a soft studio, then the same bodies where they live: on a bag strap, a keyboard, a desk and a nightstand. The face is a dot-matrix screen drawn in code, so the eyes are the same in every picture.

Lockup and mark. The M is five dots fused together, made the same way as the eyes. In the film the dots split, hop and fuse back into the lockup. The mark still reads at 16 pixels.

Type. Zen Maru Gothic for words, its rounded ends matching the shells. The face's type is drawn on a 32 by 24 dot grid.

What we left out. 6 of 10 competitors open on a person wearing or holding the device, 5 of 10 set it against sky, water or open land, and 8 of 10 promise to remember for you. Mote opens on its bodies and what they did today.

Mote key art: four chalk-white robots on plinths, only the keycap awake with white pixel eyes

The 10-second board, made for LinkedIn and X.

The logo film: five construction circles, the necks between them, then the dots split and fuse into the lockup.

Rover at work: a scrap goes in, the lid closes, the eyes squint.

The keycap body on a keyboard as a hand types

The desk rover, awake, next to a keyboard

The bedside dock on a nightstand by a window — The four bodies where they live: keyboard, desk, bag strap and nightstand.

Close-up of a Mote face: white pixel eyes and a lime light on black glass

The four Mote bodies grouped on a pale studio floor

The face is the interface: eyes, a focus timer, a full bin, a call, drawn in dots on the glass.

Rover's face showing a 25:00 focus timer

Rover's face showing a full bin with squinting eyes

The app moves Mote: drag the eyes from one body to the next.

The Mote app with Mote awake in Keycap and three bodies asleep

The Mote app with Mote awake in Clip on a bag strap

The Mote app with Mote awake in Dock in the bedroom

The lockup: five fused dots for the M, made like the eyes.

Poster: one assistant, four bodies to run

Poster: the eyes show which robot is listening

Launch night: the four bodies on a plinth before a dark LED wall and a crowd

A Mote poster in a metro lightbox: one giant pair of pixel eyes

A hand holds the Mote app on a wet street, the clip camera awake on the strap

A Mote tee with the dotted M on the chest, the clip camera on the bag strap

A city bus with the Mote lineup on its side panel

The keycap awake on a cafe table beside a laptop with a dotted-M sticker

Mote retail boxes on a shelf, the clip camera awake in an open box

The Mote retail box, sleeve off, a Mote body inside

A white Mote paper bag on a wet pavement

The four Mote bodies in graphite on a dark floor, one awake — The keycap at work, and the same kit in graphite.

Method

The category audit

We scored 10 funded consumer AI hardware companies on our startup homepage benchmark. Most look finished, and none shows its AI doing a job on the first screen.

Each homepage was scored on 12 criteria, 0 to 2 each, at 1440 and 390 pixels wide. The group averages 11.5 out of 24, below the 14.1 of our wider benchmark, though 7 of 10 look established and 9 of 10 carry the brand into shared links.

The gaps are on the first screen. None says what it does in five seconds at both widths, none names its buyer there, and none shows the AI at work; 4 of 10 never show it anywhere on the page. Those are the gaps Mote's homepage is designed to close.

Homepage score out of 24 (12 criteria, 0 to 2 each): 10 funded consumer AI hardware companies, October 2026

Company A63
Company B63
Company C63
Company D54
Company E50
Company F50
Company G46
Company H38
Company I29
Company J25
Benchmark average, 100 startups59

Alterra Studio startup website benchmark 2026. Companies are anonymised.

The offer

What we'd ship

For a real consumer AI hardware company, this is a Brand + Website Build.

Brand: Name check, world and key art, the dotted-M lockup and its construction film, palette and type, and the rule for lime
Website: A homepage that opens on the app moving Mote between bodies, with the buyer and the next step on the first screen, at desktop and phone width
Product: The body-switcher app, the Today view and the face each body shows
Launch: The animated board, posters, a metro lightbox, a bus side, a launch stage, retail boxes, a bag, a sticker and a tee

After this

What's next

Build the homepage opening on the body switcher at 1440 and 390, and score it on the same benchmark.
Answer the privacy question a page that shows each body's listening states and what stays on the device.