Coop Sweden was founded in 1899 as a member-owned cooperative and over the last century has grown into one of the nation’s largest retailers, operating close to 1,000 stores across the country. Like all grocers of this size, Coop offers a vast range of products at numerous different price points, from international staples by global brands to its own private brand products — including several lines of pasta and sauces.

With so many different products on offer in Coop’s stores, it’s essential that each range has its own distinct personality. This makes the retail experience smoother for customers and ensures that Coop’s own products can compete with other brands. For this range of Italian pasta and sauces it was vital that the packaging was bold and modern to stand out on the shelves, and that all of the design elements paired well with Coop’s corporate brand guidelines.

Not just the home of pasta, Italy is the birthplace of one of history’s most celebrated mathematicians and geometrists, Leonardo Bonacci, or Fibonacci. He discovered a numerical sequence closely related to the “golden ratio”, a value found widely in nature that was believed to create geometric harmony by the artists of the enlightenment.

Fibonacci numbers are sometimes referred to as Nature’s numbering system. They apply to the cellular growth of every living thing, from a grain of durum wheat to the arrangement of leaves on a basil plant.

The approach by the Stockholm-based agency Bedow to Coop’s pasta range was to apply the golden ratio liberally to all items of packaging using a modular grid system in which Fibonnacci’s harmonious proportions take the form of colored blocks in a vibrant modern palette. On top of this sits Coop’s own brand typeface interspersed with a set of numerals to resemble pasta and a range of mono-linear illustrations that bring the raw ingredients of the product to life.