# How to create on-brand slide decks with Claude Design

> Source: <https://www.theaithinker.com/p/how-to-create-on-brand-slide-decks>
> Published: 2026-09-07 11:02:45+00:00

I made this deck. Have a look before you read anything else.

[Here it is in Google Slides.](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NTJeT6OPcfBs3tI7XhaE2zTFNxVDYufuXNwd0PW254Q/edit) Ask for access and I will let you in. Every box is editable. I did not design a single slide. I never picked a colour, a font or a layout.

You probably make a lot of decks. And every time, the same thing happens. You dig out an old one, copy a few slides, and push boxes around until the spacing looks right. **The content takes twenty minutes. The formatting eats the afternoon.**

AI slide tools were supposed to fix that. I built [a Gemini assistant for presentations](https://www.theaithinker.com/p/how-to-create-presentations-10x-faster), got [good decks out of NotebookLM](https://www.theaithinker.com/p/how-to-create-top-tier-slides-with), and tried [Gamma.app](https://gamma.app). Each one let me down the same way. The slides came out as pictures I could not edit, or in the tool’s template instead of mine.

This deck took about an hour. Claude Code read my source material and wrote a design system. Claude Design used that design system to build the slides. **Once the design system exists, your next deck costs you nothing but its content.**

You need Claude Code and Claude Design. [Install Claude Code](https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/setup) and sign in with your claude.ai account. Claude Design is at [claude.ai/design](https://claude.ai/design) and is still in beta. A paid claude.ai plan covers both: Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise. If you sign in and Claude Design is not there, check your plan first.

Here are the six steps.

- **Step 1. Collect your slide decks.** The ones that already look like your company.
- **Step 2. Turn your slide decks into a design system.** Claude Code reads the decks and writes the design system for you.
- **Step 3. Push the design system into Claude Design.** One ask, plus a login you run yourself.
- **Step 4. Create your slide deck.** Pick the design system, attach your content, answer a few questions.
- **Step 5. Improve the design system.** Send your notes back to Claude Code.
- **Step 6. Export your slide deck.** Google Slides, PowerPoint, PDF and more.

Steps 1 to 3 you do once. Steps 4 and 6 you repeat for every deck. Step 5 you run while the design system is still learning, and less and less after that. **You stop rebuilding decks by hand, and you get your afternoons back.**

First slide up.

## Step 1: Collect your slide decks

Your design system is only as good as what it learns from. So pick the decks people at your company actually copy: the exec review, the product deck, the official template if one exists.

1. **Pick two or three slide decks** that look the way your work should look.
2. **Download them as PowerPoint files.** In Google Slides, that is File, then Download, then Microsoft PowerPoint.
3. **Make a folder for your design system** , and put the decks in a`sources` subfolder inside it.

That is it. No naming rules, no cleanup.

**How I did it.** I used McKinsey instead of my own decks, for one reason: their look is recognisable, and if the method survives that it will survive a corporate template easily. They publish their reports as PDFs, so I opened [their state of AI report](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai) and downloaded it. A PDF works fine. Slide decks work better, because they also teach the layouts.

Now hand the folder to Claude Code.

## Step 2: Turn your slide decks into a design system

A design system is your brand written down so software can read it. It comes in three layers, and the picture below uses their real names. **Tokens** are the raw values: your colours with their hex codes, your type sizes, your spacing. **Components** are the pieces built from those tokens, like a chart, a callout box or a slide header. **Templates** are whole slide layouts made of components: a cover, a section divider, a slide carrying one big number.

You will not write any of that. Claude Code does. Here is what you do:

1. **Open your design system folder** in your editor and start Claude Code in its terminal.
2. **Attach the slide decks** from your`sources` subfolder to the prompt.
3. **Ask Claude Code to turn those decks into a design system** for Claude Design. The prompt below is the one I used.
4. **Wait.** It takes about twenty minutes.

Analyze the provided McKinsey A4 PDF to extract its core visual identity, including color palettes, typography, chart styling, and spatial hierarchy, and translate these elements into a versatile design system. Define reusable and flexible templates for various slide layouts like titles, text blocks, and data visualizations. Output the final specifications as self-contained React components using Tailwind CSS optimized specifically for Claude Design, ensuring the new layouts maintain the professional and analytical aesthetic of the original report.

**The words that matter are “optimized specifically for Claude Design”**, because they decide the shape of what comes out.

**How I did it.** Mine ran for nineteen minutes. It rendered its own components in a browser, found two bugs in its work and fixed them before telling me it was done. What landed is [in this public repo](https://github.com/adamfaik/mckinsey-design-system) with eight templates and five chart types. I read the README, and that is all the checking I did.

The design system is on your machine. It is no use to you there.

## Step 3: Push the design system into Claude Design

Claude Code can send the design system straight to your Claude Design account. Stay in the same Claude Code session and ask it to.

1. **Ask:** “Publish this design system into Claude Design.”
2. **Check what Claude Code actually does.** If it builds an HTML artifact instead, tell it again and name the destination.
3. **When it asks you to run** `/design-login`**, run it.** That is the sign it is on the right track.
4. **Type** `/design-sync` and let it upload.

Claude Design documents this route itself, if you want to see it. Open the Design system selector there, choose **Create using Claude Code**, and it shows you the same two commands.

**Watch what Claude Code actually does.** Mine built an HTML artifact twice before I was specific enough about the destination.

**The login is how you know it is on the right track.** Claude Code cannot sign you in, so it stops and asks you to run `/design-login` yourself. Once you have, the upload just works.

**Then check the design system landed.** Go to [claude.ai/design](https://claude.ai/design) and open the Design systems tab. Yours sits above the ones that ship with the product.

**Click into it and you can see what crossed over:** the tokens with their codes, and every template by name.

The setup is done, and you never repeat it. Now the part you will do every time.

## Step 4: Create your slide deck

Everything happens on the Claude Design home screen. A few settings, then you wait.

1. **Go to [claude.ai/design](https://claude.ai/design).**
2. **Type what you want in the prompt box.** Keep it plain.
3. **Choose Slides** from the template row.
4. **Open the Design system selector** and pick your design system. Left on None, the deck comes out in Claude Design’s own styling.
5. **Attach your content with the plus button:** the doc, the notes, the research that holds what you want to say.
6. **Send it.**

Claude Design will not start drawing straight away. It reads your files, then asks a few questions about length and audience. Answer them, or skip and let it decide. **Four questions cost less than fixing the wrong deck.** Your questions will not match mine word for word, because every session runs a little differently.

**How I did it.** My prompt was “Make a slide deck about the state of AI in 2026.” I attached the same McKinsey PDF for the content. A few minutes later I had nine slides, in the right colours, with the speaker notes already written. Claude Design fixed two of its own layout bugs on the way.

Now read the deck properly, because the next step is where the design system gets better.

## Step 5: Improve the design system

Something will be off. A colour, a heading size, a layout Claude Design had to invent. Fix it in the design system, not in the slide, and the fix lands on every deck you make after this one.

1. In Claude Design, **read the deck slide by slide** and note what looks wrong.
2. In Claude Code, **go back to the same session and describe the fixes** in plain words. “The accent blue is too dark. Drop the three-column layout. Add a roadmap slide.”
3. In Claude Code, **type** `/design-sync` **again.** It updates your design system instead of making a second one.
4. Back in Claude Design, **create the deck again** and read it again.

**How I did it.** I skipped this loop for the McKinsey deck, because that one was a demo and the slides were already good enough to show the method. On my real work I ran it a lot: create, spot what is off, fix the design system, sync, create again. I stopped when the slides came out right without me touching them. **You judge a design system by the deck it produces.**

## Step 6: Export your slide deck

**You can share the deck straight from Claude Design**, and your colleagues can open and edit it there. Most of the time you will still want it in Google Slides or PowerPoint, because that is where people actually work.

1. **Open the Share menu.**
2. **Pick your format.** Google Slides uploads straight across, PowerPoint keeps editable text and shapes, and PDF downloads on the spot. Behind**More formats and apps** there are others: standalone HTML, a zip, Canva, or a hand-off back to Claude Code.
3. **Open the file and click into a heading.** If the cursor lands in it, the text is real and not a picture.
4. **Check the speaker notes** came with it.

**How I did it.** I sent mine to Google Slides, because that is where my colleagues would open it. Text boxes, charts and speaker notes all made the trip. That is [the deck at the top of this article](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NTJeT6OPcfBs3tI7XhaE2zTFNxVDYufuXNwd0PW254Q/edit), and nothing in it needed fixing by hand.

## Your turn

Pick two slide decks you are proud of. Give them to Claude Code and ask for a design system. Run `/design-login`, then `/design-sync`. **That is an hour, once.**

After that, every deck is a prompt and a file of notes. The exec review where only the content changes. The company template everyone hacks differently. The client deck where being off brand actually costs you something. **You will know it worked when nobody asks which tool made the slides.**