The Maryland Distillers Guild is the trade association representing the state’s craft-distilling industry—an ecosystem of dozens of independent distilleries with a significant economic footprint and a fast-growing tourism draw rooted in Maryland’s heritage as one of the cradles of American whiskey.
The Maryland Distillers Guild needed more than a website redesign. It needed a digital destination capable of telling the story of Maryland’s craft-distilling industry while serving the very different needs of consumers, travelers, member distilleries, and legislators.
The existing digital experience did not fully capture the scale, personality, history, or tourism potential of Maryland’s craft-spirits industry. The new site needed to transform a tremendous amount of information about distilleries, spirits, history, events, legislation, and resources into an engaging experience that would inspire exploration and convert interest into action.
At the same time, the site needed to function as a sophisticated member hub—providing authenticated access to industry resources, legislative information, events, and member content—while remaining intuitive, visually compelling, and useful to the general public.
The challenge was to bring storytelling, destination marketing, conversion, and complex association functionality together in one cohesive digital experience.
KTD Creative created the entire website—a massive, multidisciplinary undertaking delivered over a ten-sprint agile process across roughly six months. We began with a planning-first methodology that locked every key decision into a comprehensive project plan before a single line of code was written.
Kate Tallent, Creative Director, led a formidable team of web developers, a graphic designer, an illustrator, a videographer, and a photographer, bringing every discipline together around a shared creative vision. Every member of the team worked from a creative brief we authored, creating a unified process in which strategy, content, design, technology, photography, video, and illustration continually informed one another.
As part of that effort, we also developed a robust, professionally curated photography library for the Guild, creating a versatile visual asset that could support the new website as well as the organization’s ongoing marketing and communications needs.
We worked in close partnership with the client throughout the entire process. This was a true collaboration, not a traditional agency handoff. We held weekly check-ins, ongoing working sessions, and maintained continuous communication across strategy, content, design, development, and production.
Rather than simply presenting finished work for approval, we worked alongside the client to explore ideas, solve challenges, make informed decisions, review work, and continually refine the experience. We actively solicited client feedback in real time throughout the project, allowing us to identify opportunities, address issues early, and pivot as needed.
That collaborative approach kept the client deeply involved and ensured that every major decision reflected both the strategic goals of the project and the organization’s evolving needs.
At the heart of the project was a storytelling-driven, conversion-focused destination marketing strategy.
Our goal was not simply to build an information-rich association website. We wanted to create an immersive digital destination that would make people curious about Maryland’s craft-spirits story, inspire them to explore its distilleries and communities, and give them the tools to plan a visit and take action.
We positioned the site as the digital “front door” to Maryland’s craft-spirits renaissance, built around a homegrown, handcrafted, rooted-in-the-land narrative.
In collaboration with the client, we developed the central brand theme: Discover Maryland’s Spirit: Homegrown and Handcrafted.
Supported by the narrative:
“From Maryland’s farms and fields to its local communities, our distillers use homegrown ingredients and time-honored techniques to craft spirits that are as rooted in the land as the people who make them.”
That idea became the foundation for the digital experience, connecting Maryland’s land, people, heritage, craft, and communities to the experience of discovering its distilleries.
As part of the work, we also made a subtle refinement to the organization’s existing logo—preserving the recognition and equity of the established mark while better aligning it with the new digital experience. We then developed a refined color system, paired typographic system, and three custom style tiles through multiple rounds of exploration and refinement.
We translated the strategy into a “fork-in-the-road” architecture organized around the two core audiences: Members and Enthusiasts.
Each audience has a distinct purpose and journey. Members need to join, participate, access resources, and engage with the Guild. Enthusiasts need to learn, explore, plan, and ultimately visit.
We developed audience personas and user journeys, mapped a complete information architecture, and wireframed every template for desktop and mobile. The resulting modular design system was intentionally built to support both editorial storytelling and conversion, creating flexible pathways rather than simply presenting static information.
The site was built as a custom WordPress theme using a modular Gutenberg block architecture, giving the Guild’s own team the flexibility to maintain, expand, and evolve the platform long after launch.
KTD played a substantial editorial role in bringing the experience to life. We drafted significant amounts of new copy, edited and reshaped the client’s existing content, and developed the written content and narrative structure for the site’s many storytelling experiences.
We didn’t simply design containers for stories—we conceived the storytelling experiences themselves, wrote the content, sourced imagery, and determined how copy, photography, illustration, and interaction would work together.
Working with the Maryland Center for History and Culture, we sourced historical imagery and research and developed content for a dynamic scrollytelling experience and interactive timeline, along with additional narrative and editorial modules throughout the site.
These experiences were designed to move visitors beyond facts and listings—to help them understand the people, places, traditions, and history behind Maryland spirits and give them a reason to experience the story firsthand.
The destination-marketing strategy then connects inspiration directly to action.
A directory allows visitors to explore members by region, spirit category, amenities, and more. A Visit Widget–powered trip planner lets visitors assemble stops into a road-trip route. Curated regional spirits trails provide ready-made reasons to explore different parts of the state, with an architecture designed to accommodate future expansion.
Together, these experiences create a natural progression:
Discover → Learn → Explore → Plan → Visit
The goal is to turn the site from a passive information source into an active tourism tool—one that inspires visitors and then gives them practical ways to experience Maryland’s craft-spirits culture for themselves.
We commissioned the creative that brings the narrative to life. As part of the creative direction, we identified and engaged renowned editorial illustrator Alex Fine—whose work has appeared in publications including TIME, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Wired, and The Atlantic—to create a custom illustration system for the site.
Working closely with Fine, we developed more than 20 original illustrations, including a detailed, educational “Distilling 101” illustration designed to make the craft and process of distilling accessible and engaging.
The illustration system also includes icons, along with a signature silhouette illustration deployed as an inline SVG motif.
We also art-directed original editorial photography using a clear sourcing hierarchy, directed a homepage hero video, and built a stock video library for ongoing storytelling and marketing use.
As part of the broader creative effort, we developed a robust photography library for the Guild, giving the organization an extensive collection of professionally curated visual assets it can continue to use across the website, marketing, social media, communications, and future initiatives.
To coordinate the enormous volume of creative assets required for the site, we authored a Photography & Brand Asset Guide covering every member distillery.
Behind the public-facing storytelling experience is a sophisticated platform designed to serve the Guild and its members.
The finished build includes a unified, filterable events calendar spanning association-sponsored and member-submitted events; a secure, authenticated member portal serving as an industry hub; a document resource vault; access-controlled event visibility; and a dynamic knowledge base and filter tool organizing members’ resources and back catalog by date, type, and purpose.
Supplemental UI components—including social integrations, CTA modules, and an optional multilingual layer—extend the system throughout the experience.
The result is a platform that works equally hard for the public and for the organization behind it: a destination marketing experience on the front end and a sophisticated industry hub on the back end.
Underneath the experience, we engineered the site to a rigorous technical standard: WCAG 2.2 Level AA accessibility built in from the ground up; technical SEO architecture; and a configured Google Analytics 4 dashboard.
For launch and beyond, we also handled legacy content migration, recorded staff training, created a site-specific digital Operator’s Manual, and provided dedicated post-launch support.
The result is one of the most ambitious digital projects in the association’s history: a storytelling-driven destination marketing platform designed to turn curiosity into action.
The new site brings together brand strategy, editorial content, historical storytelling, illustration, photography, video, interactive tools, tourism planning, and sophisticated association functionality in one cohesive experience.
It gives Maryland’s distilleries a powerful platform for visibility and engagement. It gives the Guild a secure and scalable hub for its members and industry work. It gives the organization a substantial new library of photography and creative assets for ongoing marketing. And it gives consumers something more valuable than a directory—it gives them a reason to discover Maryland, explore its craft, plan a trip, and experience the state for themselves.
Our commitment to the Guild didn’t end with the website. Recognizing that the organization would need ongoing marketing support after launch, KTD Creative proactively created a connection between the Maryland Distillers Guild and the University of Maryland, College Park, helping establish a pathway for the Guild to bring on a marketing intern to support its continuing digital marketing, communications, and promotional efforts after the new site launches.
It’s a tangible example of how we approach client relationships: we don’t simply deliver a project and walk away. We look beyond the immediate scope to identify opportunities, make valuable connections, and help position our clients for continued success.
That philosophy was embedded throughout the project itself. By soliciting client feedback in real time, maintaining close communication, and remaining flexible enough to pivot as needs evolved, we created a process in which the client was heard, supported, and actively involved at every stage.
The result is more than a new website. It is a stronger digital foundation for the Guild’s future—a platform, content ecosystem, visual asset library, and marketing infrastructure designed to continue working for the organization long after launch.
The project is still in production and is scheduled to launch in October 2026.