INVITRO: rebranding for a healthcare chain

INVITRO

Self-Care & Sport Cosmetics & Pharmacy

Design strategy • Tagline and descriptor • Environmental graphics and navigation signs design • Brand book and retail book • Brand audit • Rebranding •

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INVITRO is a leading company in Russia and the CIS; 30 years on the market have made it a synonym for “lab tests” in the eyes of many. In the last five years, the company has expanded its service range significantly, from lab and functional tests to a chain of multifunctional healthcare clinics. Right now, INVITRO is entering a new stage of digitalization, updating its website and digital services, developing a new mobile app and creating in-house IT solutions for the healthcare market.

The objective the client set for Depot was not to “reinvent” the familiar brand, but rather to strengthen it while preserving its visibility and trust. The brand positioning shifted toward a modern company that makes healthcare easy, quick and accessible both online and offline.

The project was special because Depot already partnered with INVITRO in 2016 to develop a brand book and visual identity; the new rebranding that included a comprehensive strategic design was a continuation of that long-term partnership.

Depot developed the brand strategy and positioning, updated the visual system, the slogan and helped with the brand font. As a result, INVITRO kept its recognizable framework, but acquired a flexible language that can be used for frank, but varying conversations with patients, doctors and partners in all their regions of presence, from Russia to Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, while remaining close to and understood by the local audiences.

INVITRO: rebranding for a healthcare chain - Портфолио Depot

Positioning

The company has an already established mission: to develop a healthcare culture in Russia, although their external communications had almost nothing to do with that role. Studies conducted by the Depot team confirmed: lots of people still view healthcare as a long, challenging and expensive process you wouldn't think of going through without a good reason. That's how the INVITRO value promise was born: INVITRO makes healthcare easy, quick and accessible. That idea became the foundation for all the solutions that followed: from audience segmentation to visual language and video script.

It was important for the client to emphasize that their doctors were real and prepared to help you at any moment. Ever since the pandemic, doctors have been thought of as heroes always ready to help their patients, no matter what. We made that semantic lynchpin part of our updated brand DNA, bringing together everyone related to healthcare and calling them Health Heroes.

Identity

Our visual system had to achieve multiple objectives at once: preserve visibility, emphasize technical capability, demonstrate the expanding range of services and do not scare the current clients away by changing the image too drastically.

That was how our basic principle for handling the logo was formulated: minimum intervention for maximum effect. We kept the existing logo structure, but took care to fine-tune it, improving its proportions and legibility in a digital environment. We also modernized the color palette. The Depot team slightly changed the recognizable INVITRO Blue and orange shade, expanding the palette, but keeping the brand recognizable.

The photo style left the impersonal stock images completely behind. The focus shifted to real heroic doctors who are dynamic, proactive and inspire trust. Instead of affected wide smiles, they demonstrate the brand emotion: the very moment when you understand you're in the hands of a thoughtful and empathetic professional.

Brand font

For a company as large as INVITRO, a font is a tool that lives every day on dozens of media: from clinic navigation to apps, reports and doctors' training manuals.

Depot offered a concept with die-cuts while our partners from Type Today helped us integrate them into a full-fledged font that can be equally easily used in big headers, dense blocks of information and digital interfaces.

The idea behind the INVITRO Sans brand font was to make it a design accent that would convey the brand's confidence and leadership. The 1-shaped key elements emphasize INVITRO's market primacy.

INVITRO. The result is confidence

The INVITRO restyling was a systemic effort that helped the largest healthcare company in Russia and the CIS leave its image of a “lab chain” behind and establish itself as a healthcare company that offers clinics and a broad range of services. The visibility and strength of the brand familiar to millions were preserved, while new resources were added for further scaling

Last but not least was the slogan that organically emerged from the changed brand positioning: INVITRO. The result is confidence. The slogan has become the brand assembly point that set the tone for all other communications.

The INVITRO rebranding was one of those dream projects that give the team inspiration and mobilize it at first, but then serve to really upgrade and improve the designers' skill level. INVITRO went through a dramatic change by creating popular services, products, digital functions and platforms. We were also charmed by their earnest social position and human focus. I think Depot was not only able to present the rejuvenated brand's values by designing effective communications, but to do it in a memorable and creative way, which is nice to have amid the current information chaos. Clients like that are what I always dream about. The win-win story of the INVITRO rebranding happened, and it's up to debate who really was the bigger winner!

Aleksey Andreev, Managing Partner, Depot

The Depot team continues working with INVITRO.

Agency team:

Farkhad Kuchkarov, Strategy & Development Director
Anastasia Kharuk, Executive Director for Strategy
Galina Evdokimova, Verbal Communications Director
Semyon Shatylo, Creative Director, ID Function
Aleksandra Shchit, Creative Director, ID Function
Polina Sergeeva, Creative Director, ID Function
Andrey Anisimov, Art Director, Sound Designer
Anna Komleva, Senior Designer
Ksenia Titova, Senior Designer
Anna Gavrina, Designer
Maria Kadysheva, Designer
Albina Gaynullina, Designer
Darya Ivanova, Designer
Rustam Fayzrakhmanov, Technical Designer
Alina Dolgova, Strategist
Maria Geldt, Strategist
Alina Burova, Market Analyst
Aleksandr Zhegulov, Copywriter
Hanna Khmelyova, Copywriter
Rustam Usmanov, Illustration Artist
Aleksey Elokhin, Video Editor
Evgeny Nikitin, Motion Technician
Viktor Glagolev, Intern
Irina Smirnova, Sales Manager
Irma Zueva, Senior Project Manager
Aleksandra Ivanova, Director, Account Management Team

Nik Nedashkovsky, Font Designer
Ilya Ruderman, Font Designer, Co-founder, Type.Today

Aleksey Andreev, Managing Partner
Anna Lukanina, Managing Partner
Anna Kalinicheva, Sales Director

Stasya Vasilenko, PR Manager

Client team:

Darya Kolesnikova, Brand Department Director, Creative Director
Yulia Tseykhmeystryuk, Lead Designer
Elena Knyazyatova, Lead Designer
Maria Chepeleva, Market Research Manager

End Date: 12/22/2025