Cohiba Spectre continues award-winning streak with double industry recognition
Levity® has been recognized among the world’s top packaging designers, with Cohiba Spectre earning major honors across both the luxury packaging and cigar industries.
The ultra-luxury collectible was awarded Gold at the prestigious Graphis Packaging 11 Awards and also ranked among the year’s top cigar packaging designs in the renowned Halfwheel Awards – continuing Spectre’s long-standing reputation as one of the most celebrated luxury packaging experiences.
Prior to Levity’s involvement, the program had faced mounting challenges around cost overruns, delayed timelines, and highly stylized digital concepts.
Spectre needed more than beautiful renders. It needed a design that could make it to market – without compromising luxury ambition.
Enter Levity.
Tasked with creating a collectible experience worthy of the Cohiba name, the team set out to develop something cinematic yet precise, modern yet timeless, and engineered for a consumer for whom luxury is already the baseline.
Produced in extremely limited quantities each year, every Spectre release carries enormous expectation. Previous editions had already established an award-winning reputation across both the cigar and packaging worlds.
From day one, Levity’s Concept-to-Commerce™ (C2C™) approach shaped the process, ensuring every idea balanced imagination with manufacturability.
The team rapidly explored hundreds of conceptual thumbnails through high-velocity ideation, working in close collaboration with the client to pressure-test concepts in real time. One direction quickly separated itself from the rest in the first round of ideation.
At the center of the final design is Spectre’s signature corset-style reveal – a tactile opening ritual engineered around a sequence of audible clicks, magnetic snaps, and controlled tension. Less packaging. More performance.
But the mechanism wasn’t designed purely for theater. Levity partnered with structural engineers from the earliest stages of development, bridging industrial design and manufacturing feasibility from day one to ensure the experience could scale flawlessly into production.
The result is a packaging system that feels impossibly intricate – yet functions with precision.
Retailers, collectors, influencers, and enthusiasts alike have embraced Spectre not simply as packaging, but as a collectible object – one that continues to push the boundaries of what ultra-premium presentation can be.
Theo van Blyenburgh, Executive Creative Director and President at Levity, said: “Being recognized among the world’s top packaging designers is incredibly meaningful because much of our work happens behind closed doors, particularly in highly regulated categories.
“Awards matter – only when it’s the business objective. Spectre’s sole reason for being is to win awards as proof of Cohiba’s ongoing superiority. This goes beyond a trophy. It’s proof that when trust, immersion, engineering, and craft come together, you can create something truly exceptional.
“What I’m proudest of, though, is how little the final product changed from the original concept sketch. The idea we presented in round one is fundamentally the product that went to market. That rarely happens – and it speaks to how clearly we understood the opportunity from the beginning.”
Want to see the full story behind the build? Explore the complete case study here: https://levity.org/spectre