Using Design Systems on WordPress with Mike McAlister

Mike McAlister — the creator of the Ollie theme and a longtime WordPress designer — joined me to talk about bringing design systems into the WordPress ecosystem.

What's a Design System?

If you've ever seen a website where every page looks like it was designed by a different person, you've seen the absence of a design system. A design system is a set of reusable components, patterns, and guidelines that ensure consistency across an entire site.

Big companies like Google and Airbnb have had these for years. The WordPress world is catching up.

Why It Matters for WordPress

WordPress's block editor makes it possible — for the first time — to build actual design systems within WordPress itself. Block patterns, global styles, reusable blocks, and theme.json all work together to create a cohesive system.

Mike's Ollie theme is built on these principles. Instead of a theme with 200 options and toggles, it's a curated set of patterns and styles that work together. Less flexibility, but much better results.

The Agency Advantage

For agencies building client sites, design systems mean faster builds, easier maintenance, and happier clients. When every component follows the same rules, there's no "why does this button look different on the about page?" conversations.

Mike's approach: build the system first, then assemble pages from it. Not the other way around.