BRANDING: HARMONY CO-OP

The Harmony Natural Foods Co-op is a non-profit, cooperative grocery store based in Bemidji, Minnesota, dating to 1977. Harmony provides farm-to-table foods to the greater Bemidji region, and takes care to focus on environmentally aware and socially responsible business practices. This new identity was produced for Harmony’s 2011 re-brand, which is tied to an expansion and relocation to a newly-remodeled retail, deli, and commercial kitchen space. 

Harmony wanted this new identity to be welcoming and universal, to strongly represent their identity as Bemidji’s friendly downtown grocer. A friendly script typeface (with custom letterforms) was chosen to represent a classic storefront aesthetic, using modern colors already in the Co-op’s brand palette. The wheat stalk was brought into the wordmark from the previous logo to represent the Co-op’s health food roots. Combined, the mark is simple, approachable, and friendly, with a classic vibe and a modern sensibility. 

harmonyfoods.coop

Project included overall art direction and brand consulting on the interior and exterior of the store. Brand elements were reappropriated into signage, interior color, and licensed products. Architecture and adaptive reuse project was conducted by Widseth, and signs were produced by Meyers Sign Source.

Above: Original site proposal rendering for the Harmony Co-op's exterior space, including color palette. The project evolved from this initial pitch.