La Casa del Habano

Concept

Smoking a cigar is not consuming a product: it is a ritual with its own pace. You choose it, feel it, cut it, light it patiently, and take your time. La Casa del Habano does not sell loose cigars — it sells that ritual, and with it a place: the smoking lounge with a wood fire, the meeting room, the climate-controlled cellar where every client has a locker.

The site understood that and behaved the same way. In 2005, when the Paraguayan web was mostly link lists and tables, this site refused to have a menu. Visitors found a closed box on a black background and had to do something for something to happen — move the cursor closer, touch the objects, discover that the lighter produces a flame and leads to the glossary, that the matches slide out of the box and open the FAQ, that the cutter opens and reveals the cigar guide. Just like a cigar: whoever is in a hurry does not enjoy it.

It also teaches: the guide shows cigar formats photographed at real scale, sorted by ring gauge; the glossary provides the vocabulary; Brands is a black book that opens like a ring binder and tells the story of Cohiba, Montecristo and Partagás; Tips is the ritual in five steps, with the smoker's hands photographed at each one. Everything was built with original photography, no stock. It won the Tatakua de Oro, and twenty years later it is still the work that best explains where my way of thinking about an interface comes from: the scene first, the menu second.