Dr. Leahu

Seven years as head of design and creative director, in a network that grew from four clinics to eighteen and ended in an acquisition by Regina Maria.

Year: 2018–2025
Client: Dr. Leahu
Role: Head of design & creative director
Duration: Seven years

The Dr. Leahu design toolkit, hung against red

The problem

In 2018, Dr. Leahu was a small network: three or four clinics, in two cities. Each opened with whatever had made it onto the walls. A patient passed through three points of contact — the street, reception, the phone — and collected three different impressions of the same brand. A network that wanted to grow could not grow like that.

The solution

Rebranding and a brand book, then applying it everywhere: creative and graphic concepts, the design of the clinics and the patient journey through them, interactive materials in the clinic and online, video and animation. Not a logo delivered and left to someone else, but a system carried onto every surface a patient touches — and, more importantly, a system a new clinic could inherit without having watched it being built.

A Dr. Leahu Space Academy roll-up with its drawn characters, in a shopping centre in Oradea

The Space Academy

Of everything I did there, this is my favourite: Academia Spațială Dr. Leahu — clinics for children only, with games and characters of their own. Not a waiting room with stickers, but a whole concept: the name, the characters, the shape of a child’s journey through the clinic. A child who isn’t frightened on the first visit stays a patient for twenty years.

The Dr. Leahu dental tourism brochure, open at full mouth rehabilitation

And abroad

The network did not stop at the border. I made the dental tourism materials for patients from the UK, with the whole path explained step by step — from the first consultation to the flight home. Someone travelling from another country needs to see the entire journey before they buy the ticket.

The challenge

Seven years means I also caught what does not show at launch: teams turning over, materials running out and being reprinted wrong, new clinics inheriting a standard without having watched it being built. And at the end, the move into Regina Maria Dental Clinics — a brand has to survive the moment it stops being its own.

What it left behind

From three or four clinics in two cities to eighteen clinics in thirteen cities, and an acquisition by Regina Maria. The growth belonged to the marketing team I was part of; the design and creative side I led myself, from the first day to the last.

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