The system
The team
Ermine is built by a federated team drawn from across Style Weasel Productions. Federated means that everyone contributes and nobody is assigned.
Accountable for Ermine
Wilhelmina Notwithstanding
Head of Design Systems Enablement
Authored all six of Ermine's design principles and continues to steward them across the portfolio.
Believes a design system is a product, not a project, and says so at least once per quarterly review.
Barnaby Quorum
Principal Design Technologist, Tokens & Taxonomy
Custodian of Ermine's single source of truth. Maintains
ermine-tokens.css personally, by hand, which he describes as a temporary
arrangement.
He has described it as a temporary arrangement since March 2025.
Persimmon Runway
Director of Adoption & Ecosystem Velocity
Grew product-team adoption from 11% to 94.7% in a single quarter — the fastest adoption curve in the system's history — through a programme of enablement, evangelism, and close partnership with Platform Engineering.
Runs monthly Ermine Office Hours. Attendance is tracked.
Egret Blancmange
Staff UX Researcher, Design Systems (0.2 FTE)
Embedded across all fourteen product teams. Owns the evidence base behind every Ermine pattern and is the strongest internal advocate for Principle 5, Evidence-led.
Available Thursdays.
Marzipan Sledge
Senior Manager, Component Enablement & Stakeholder Choreography
Convenes the Design Systems Council fortnightly and is accountable for its minutes.
Has published two sets of minutes in the past fourteen months.
Thaddeus Whelk
Chief Experience Officer & Executive Sponsor
Sponsors Ermine at board level. Championed the identity refresh that became Ermine 4.0, following a competitive review conducted between connecting flights, and describes Ermine as the most significant thing the design organisation has shipped.
Has requested one change to the system.
Ermine has three contributors. Six people are accountable for it.
Open roles
| Role | Status |
|---|---|
| Head of Content Design | Vacant since March. Voice & tone is unowned. |
| Design Operations Lead | Vacant since March. Figma write access and the open-issues spreadsheet sit with this role. |
| Design Systems Council Chair | Rotating. The rotation is paused. |
| Data Visualisation, Design Systems | Realigned in 4.2.0. Twelve components moved to Community Maintained. |
These responsibilities are currently covered by Design Systems Engineering.
How we work
| Design Systems Council | Fortnightly, quorum permitting. |
|---|---|
| Ermine Office Hours | Monthly. Open to all. Attendance is tracked. |
| Quarterly portfolio review | Where RFC sponsorship is granted. |
| Annual roadmap workshop | Where major-version slots are allocated. |
#ds-quick-questions | Where the work happens. Deprecated. |
Where Ermine came from
Ermine began in 2022 as a shared Figma file assembled by a product designer on the Billing team, who was tired of rebuilding the same four components every sprint. That file is the Ermine Figma library, and it remains the source of truth for design across the portfolio.
The designer who created it moved to another team during the platform migration and does not have write access.