Le Misplaced Frenchman is a wine label from Okanagan BC. In order to stand out among other wineries in the region, Claude Dubois, the vineyard's owner, required a brand name, logo as well as a bottle design. This label pays tribute to both Claude's proud French roots as well as acknowledges his new home in Canada.

In our packaging design class we received the following brief:

Claude Dubois, upon arriving from France in 2005, immediately settled in the Okanagan, where he purchased 20 acres of prime vineyard property and planted a number of varietals of grapes. They flourished, and consequently, he is ready to bottle his 2012 Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc, and open his winery to the public for tastings. The competition is stiff in the Okanagan, so he is looking for a brand to set him apart from the rest of the wineries. His wines are a medium price point. The project contains two parts, coming up with a unique name for the brand as well as designing a logo/label.

Before starting any creative work, it was important to obtain a strong understanding of local wineries who's bottles we would be competing with for the buyers attention. To do this, 52 BC wine brands being solid in stories were identified and analyzed for their name, logo and bottle design choices.

I was provided several names, however, none of them stood out as better than the average wine brand. For example, two of the options provided (Ancient Willow Estates and Cliff Edge Estates) were names based on geographic features of the property. The competitive analysis showed that out of the 52 local wine brands, 18 of them had names based on geographic features and none of them stood out from the others. So I took inspiration from Claude's French roots and came up with the name: Le Misplaced Frenchman.

When it came to designing the label, I wanted to create a design where the name, logo and design worked together to convey a theme, rather than simply creating a visually appealing design. In order to symbolically recreate Claude the proud Frenchman who lives in Canada, I used two symbols to represent each country; a rooster and a beaver.

Finally, the last challenge that I had to overcome was formatting the typography. The project brief required us to fit quite a bit of type on the front of the label, meaning that the design had to be visually appealing, meaningful in relation to the brand name and finally functional in conveying key product information.