Case Study
Brand Identity · Product Design · Copywriting
The first cigar platform built for how collectors actually think.
Two years building a product — and a brand — worthy of the ritual.
- Platform
- Android
- Launched
- December 2024
- Scope
- Brand · Product · Copy
- Company
- Cigarwell
Challenge and Approach
The Challenge
Cigar apps had a problem: they looked like they were built by people who'd never smoked one. Generic UIs, clunky flows, no visual personality. Cigarwell came in with an early MVP that had real potential — and real problems. The structure was unclear, the brand was underdeveloped, and the product didn't yet speak to the people it was built for. A passionate audience with high taste deserved something sharper.
The Approach
Two years. Every screen, every word, every decision made with the same question: does this feel like it belongs in a serious collector's hands? The work covered the full spectrum — brand identity, information architecture, product design, and copy — because in a category this specific, you can't fix one without fixing all of them. The goal wasn't to make a beautiful cigar app. It was to build the first one that actually thinks like a cigar person.
01 — Brand
A brand with an edge, not an attitude.
The visual identity started with a clear constraint: premium without pretense. The cigar world has enough of the latter. Rich burgundy, charcoal, and cream — a palette that reads refined without screaming luxury. Typography paired to feel editorial, not corporate. And at the center of it all, an illustration system rooted in tropical Neo Art Deco abstraction — a visual language no cigar app had ever touched. It connected the culture (tropical, Cuban, deeply human) with a modern editorial sensibility. It made empty states feel intentional. It made the brand feel like it had a point of view.
Premium without pretense.
Color palette
Typography
Cigarwell
Instrument Serif · Mona Sans · Tropical Neo Art Deco illustration
02 — Product
Structure first, beauty second.
The MVP had no clear information hierarchy. A platform this broad — collection management, humidor tracking, cigar logging, discovery, ratings — needed a spine before it needed a skin. The navigation and IA work came first: mapping how collectors actually think about their cigars, not how a developer assumed they did. From that foundation, every screen had a job. Onboarding that didn't waste your time. A dashboard that showed you what mattered. Collection and humidor views that made managing 50 cigars feel as easy as managing five.
Every screen had a job.
03 — Interaction
The Light button.
At the center of the bottom nav sits a single button: Light. Tap it when you're smoking. That's it. The deceptively simple mechanic took months to get right — because logging a cigar mid-session has to feel like part of the ritual, not an interruption of it. The placement, the animation, the flow through to the end of the smoke — everything was designed to disappear into the moment. You're not filling out a form. You're recording something you care about.
04 — Interaction
Simple took the longest.
This one took the longest. Rating a cigar isn't like rating a restaurant. There's draw, burn, flavor, finish — and years of personal taste behind every judgment. Early versions were too clinical. Later ones were too simplified. The final system landed somewhere honest: rate multiple attributes without it feeling like a survey. The interaction is smooth enough that you forget you're doing it. That's the only acceptable outcome for something users do at the end of every smoke.
Two years, one direction.
The kind of work where the details compound.
This wasn't a project with a handoff. It was a sustained creative relationship — brand, product, and copy all moving together over two years. Where a decision made in the illustration system shows up in the empty state, which shows up in the onboarding, which shapes how the whole product feels on day one. That's what a platform like this needs. Not a redesign. A foundation.
Cigarwell launched on Android in December 2024. In the months since, it's built a community of 1,600+ collectors — the kind of early growth that happens when you build the right thing.
"[Founder quote — to be provided by client before launch]"
The work.
Brand
- Logo & wordmark
- Color palette
- Typography system
- Illustration system (Tropical Neo Art Deco)
- Iconography
- Motion direction
Product
- Information architecture
- Onboarding
- Dashboard
- Collection & humidor management
- Cigar logging
- Empty states
- Search & discovery
- Rating system
- The Light button
Copy
- Messaging framework
- UI copy
- Tone of voice
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