Building a multi-brand joint venture design system for BetMGM, with ToniAnn Drenckhahn — #06

02/24/25 • 62 min

ToniAnn joins the show to share her experience building a multi-brand design system for BetMGM and Entain's joint venture. This episode is our first project deep dive and it's full of legacy codebases, lessons learned, and big wins. ToniAnn talks to us about dealing with ambiguity, owning your decisions, and keeping leadership on board as you ship a system that changes the way your business works—and your partners businesses, too.

💖 On Theme is a brand new podcast, so if you like what you're hearing, please hit subscribe and sign up at designsystemsontheme.com!

Links & References

🎨🎟️ Into Design Systems is May 25-28
Get your ticket at intodesignsystems.com/onthemeInto Design Systems is back with their annual virtual conference, May 28-30, 2025. Get your ticket now for three days of practical, hands on sessions showing the what, why, and how of design systems. This year, the conference is focused on developer handoff, accessibility, multi brand theming, and governance. You'll get hands on knowledge you can put to use at work immediately, files and resources to take away, and hear from very well known industry speakers.

📲 Text the show your thoughts!

💖 On Theme is a brand new podcast, so if you like what you're hearing, please hit subscribe and sign up at designsystemsontheme.com!

Links & References

Previous Episode

Stop waiting for permission! and other ways to show design systems value, with Brian Alfaro — #05

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If the way we're building design systems has a fatal flaw, it's "waiting for enough investment to get it right." In this episode, Brian teaches us to not wait for permission and how your product teams' success is your success. Brian reminds us how important it is to remember that we're all on the same team, building the same product—and why internal politics and storytelling matters way more than components. Plus, why design systems are like toilets (not a Dad joke, I promise) and why Brian and I think "measuring the system is hard" is a beautiful thing.
💖 On Theme is a brand new podcast, so if you like what you're hearing, please hit subscribe and sign up at designsystemsontheme.com!

Links & References

Brian Alfaro on LinkedIn
The Washington Post Design System
Brian on bringing value first on the Connecting your Design System to business value panel with Into Design Systems
Brian on the anatomy of WaPo's component sprints on the Figma blog

Next Episode

I’m a design system consumer now: lessons from the other side, with Beau Ulrey — #07

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I invited Beau to the podcast because of his great Medium articles on design systems... but he's not working on a system team right now! Beau shares his experiences on both sides of the—fence? aisle?—and the lessons he's taken away. We chat about the tradeoffs of building for speed vs stability, bringing new designs for AI products into the system, onboarding, cross-team empathy, and why we're always complaining about the other side. Plus, find out what Beau wanted to be when he grew up.

💖 On Theme is a brand new podcast, so if you like what you're hearing, please hit subscribe and sign up at designsystemsontheme.com!

Links & References

On Theme: Design Systems in Depth - Building a multi-brand joint venture design system for BetMGM, with ToniAnn Drenckhahn — #06

Transcript

ToniAnn Drenckhahn00:00:00.000

There's also this leaning on the vision that we try to do with our leadership teams. We know next year where we want to make progress, but in five years, where are we going to be? What does that five year vision look like with the design system? What does it look like without the design system? And we're able to actually use that strategy of, that's where our other teams are going in the future. You know, they're trying to be more collab