Over the past decade, developing advanced catalysts for clean and sustainable energy conversion has been subject to extensive study. Driven by great advances achieved in computational quantum chemistry, synthetic chemistry, and material characterization techniques, the preferential design of a most-appropriate catalyst for a specific electrochemical reaction is possible. Here a universal process for the design of high-performance carbon-based electrocatalysts, by engineering their intrinsic electronic structures and physical structures to promote their extrinsic activities for different energy conversion reactions, is presented and summarized. How such a powerful strategy may aid the discovery of more electrocatalysts for a sustainable and clean energy infrastructure is discussed.