Dan Popa

Specialized in Baby Products Design.

Dan Popa

About Dan Popa

Dan Popa is an ambitious and creative person with an enterpreneurship attitude. Always looking for inmprovements and better solutions, he sees opportunities everywhere. Leea Toys and the products he created were the response to his quest for better parenting solutions, better use of materials and resources, more practical solutions to practical problems, better quality time with and for the children. Having graduated the Faculty of Medicine, and being highly interested in the child development, Dan Popa found the opportunity to use all his knowledge, combined with creativity and playfulness. This is the reason why Leea's Tower and Leoleo are unique, being created with solid child developmemnt knowledge, with desire for playfullness and creativity, with a high degree of detail in design, and never-seen-before level of multi functionality. In the practical life, every parent knows that there are many objects purchased for the child, but most of them are used very little or sometimes even not at all. Dan Popa wanted to create the most useful and really-used object for children possible.

  • Winner of the A' Design Award.
  • Specialized in Baby Products Design.
  • Original Design.
  • Creative, Diligent and Innovative.
  • All Designs
  • Baby Products
Leoleo Multifunctional Kids Chair

Leoleo Multifunctional Kids Chair

Baby Products Design

Good Design Deserves Great Recognition

Nominate Your Work for the A' Design Award.

Sign-Up

Interview with Dan Popa

Could you please tell us more about your art and design background? What made you become an artist/designer? Have you always wanted to be a designer?
I was always attracted by shaping things – be they events, situations, or objects, so I guess I always wanted to be a designer. As a professional designer, I am self-taught and never graduated any design school. My background as a designer I can say, starts in childhood, when I was always building and crafting objects for play or for practical purposes. I could say I became a professional when I started working with my company, in 2015, for developing the pieces of furniture I am producing and selling now.
Can you tell us more about your company / design studio?
I founded Leea Toys in 2015-2016, after being very enthusiastic about what I was creating in my backyard for my little giirl Leea. Encouraged by friends and family, I put all my energy into this absolutely new and unknown domain for me – kids furniture, starting from scratch. I opened a workshop and started selling locally online. I was amazed by the results, the warm and enthusiastic feedback from clients, and especially by the fact that the buyers were highly educated people , especially in the fields of architecture, design, child care and child education. In 2017 I listed my products on marketplaces offering them to the European Union market and to my surprise, I got the same enthusiasm from there too. Since then, I was constantly improving my work and growing the sales, reaching the 1M Eur salles figure in 2020, selling more than 5000 units, and running a 10 workers mini factory.
What is "design" for you?
Design for me is purposefully giving meaningful, beautiful and new shape to things. I think it is an ancestral achievement of humans, since they started building tools, or even earlier, since they started knowingly and consciously shaping a situation in their advantage. I think there is a difference between how a bird designs its nest and how a human designs its tools. In my opinion, consciousness, planning, pre-determined purpose and beauty are inseparable from design.
What kinds of works do you like designing most?
My design is practical and minimalistic. Mostly I like to improve things in a practical manner, and I am fascinated and like to work with mechanisms. Aesthetics comes second, but it is also important.
What is your most favorite design, could you please tell more about it?
I guess it would be an aerodynamic object, maybe a boomerang, or a high speed vehicle
When do you feel the most creative?
at 3AM when I wake up with the solution I could not grasp one evening before :)))
When judging a design as good or bad, which aspects do you consider first?
Is it useful? Is it new/unseen before? Is it beautiful? Does it surprise me? Does it have a bit of genius?
From your point of view, what are the responsibilities of a designer for society and environment?
The responsibility is huge. Everything starts with design. It actually is the way we shape our world. We have grown so powerful that our impact on the planet we live on is no longer insignificant. We should consider the way our planet will look like in the future as a design project.
How do you think the "design field" is evolving? What is the future of design?
Design has the huge task to ensure and secure our future. It is a way of controlling reality and the only way to get us out of the way of randomness

Stay Updated with Latest Design News

By clicking Sign-Up, you are opting to receive promotional emails from A' Design Awards, World Design Rankings, World Design Consortium and Designers.Org You can update your preferences or unsubscribe any time.

You are now at the right step

Join Designers.org & Start Promoting Your Design Worldwide.

Create an Account