Animated Decks in Claude Design

I had a workshop deck with about thirty slides. The content was good. The design was not. Every slide had the same structure: a title, three cards, a line at the bottom. By slide ten you stop reading.

So I gave it to Claude Design with one prompt, picked Opus 5.5, and let it go to work. Less than five minutes later I had the same content in my own brand, with movement, icons, and layouts that change from slide to slide.

This guide is the exact setup. Most of the work happens once, in the first step. After that, every deck is one prompt.

What you need

• A paid Claude plan. Claude Design is in beta on Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise. It is not on the free plan. On Enterprise, an owner has to switch it on in Organization settings first.
• An existing deck or document. PowerPoint, PDF or a written outline. This is your content. Claude Design redesigns it, so the words you bring are the words you get.
• Your brand. Whatever you have: your website's code, a brand guidelines PDF, your logo files, your fonts.

If Claude says it cannot create a design or a presentation, check Settings, then Capabilities, and make sure code execution and file creation is switched on.

Step 1: Build your design system (once)

This is the step that matters. Without a design system, Claude's output is clean but generic. With one, every deck, one-pager and mockup comes out looking like you, without you explaining your brand again.

In Claude, open Design in the sidebar, then open the design systems panel and create a new one. Claude asks what the system should be built from. You get three options:

You can combine them. Code plus your logo files plus a brand PDF beats any one on its own.

If you want to steer it, paste this in when you create the system:

Build a design system for [BRAND NAME].

Who we are: [one line]
Who we sell to: [one line]
How we want to feel: [three words, e.g. confident, plain-spoken, premium]
What we are not: [three words, e.g. hype, corporate, playful]

Use the attached files as the source of truth for colours, fonts and layout. Where you have to guess, say so.

Include: colour tokens (and name the one or two colours allowed to carry emphasis), typography, spacing and corner radius, a written guide to our voice and what is banned, and core components like buttons, cards and stat tiles.

Read the written guide before you use it

The design system comes with a written guide. Claude reads it every time it designs for you, so if it is wrong, everything downstream is wrong. Check four things:

1. The voice sounds like you. Ours said em dashes were "heavily used". We never use them. One line to fix, but it had to be caught.
2. It names your emphasis colours. "Two brand colours carry emphasis" is more useful than a list of twelve.
3. It names your signature move. Ours is a purple to orange gradient, used once or twice per page, never everywhere. Every brand has one. Make sure it is written down.
4. It says what is banned. Stock photos, busy backgrounds, emoji, exclamation marks. Whatever you never want to see.

Then publish it. Once published, new projects in your organisation use it instead of the default.

Step 2: Start a presentation and attach your deck

Back on the Design home screen, under Make something new, choose Presentation.

Attach your existing deck, and attach your design system too. In my session it sits as a chip under the message ("WhiteHorse AI Design System"). If your system is published as the organisation default, new projects use it automatically, but attaching it makes sure.

Step 3: The prompt

This is the prompt from the video, word for word:

I want you to take the contents of this deck and recreate them in our design system.

Where you can be more imaginative, include more animations and icons. Right now each slide has a very similar structure.

E.g. get creative around the ladder image as necessary.

Three things make it work:

• "Recreate them in our design system" keeps the content and changes the look. Claude is not writing your talk, it is redesigning it.
• "Each slide has a very similar structure" names the actual problem. Claude fixes what you point at.
• "Get creative around the ladder image" gives it one concrete place to be bold. Pick the slide in your deck that deserves a moment, and name it.

Here is a version to fill in for your own deck:

Take the contents of this deck and recreate them in our design system. Keep my words; change the design.

Where you can be more imaginative, add animations and icons. Right now [describe the problem, e.g. every slide is a title and three bullet points].

Vary the layouts so no two slides in a row look the same. Use motion to reveal ideas one at a time, not for decoration.

Get creative with [the one slide or image that deserves a moment].

Step 4: Pick the model and let it run

In the message box, open the model menu. I used Opus 5.5, the most capable model I had. A full deck in one shot is a big job, so give it the biggest model you can. If you do not see Opus 5.5 on your plan, pick the strongest model you have.

Then send it and leave it alone. Mine took under five minutes for the whole deck.

Design work counts toward the same usage limits as the rest of Claude. A long deck on a big model uses more, so do the first run on a real deck, not a test.

Step 5: Tighten it with follow-ups

The first pass is usually most of the way there. These follow-ups fix the common gaps:

If slides still look alike:

Slides [X] to [Y] still feel the same. Give each one a different layout: a big number, a diagram, a comparison, a single quote. Keep the content.

If the motion feels random:

Make the animations tell the story. Reveal each point on click, in the order I would talk about it. Keep every movement short and simple, fades and slides only.

If a slide is crowded:

Slide [X] is trying to say too much. Keep one idea on it and move the rest to the next slide, or into the speaker notes.

Before you present:

Check every slide for text that overflows its box, anything cut off at the edges, and icons that do not match the design system. List what you fix.

You can also click directly on anything to adjust it, and drag, resize and align elements by hand.

Claude Design is in beta and does not keep a version history yet. Before a big round of changes, duplicate the project so you can go back.

Step 6: Present or export

You can present straight from Claude, which keeps every animation.

When you need a file, use the Export button in the top right:

Rule of thumb: present from Claude or HTML, send the PDF afterwards.

Common problems

• It looks generic. No design system, or it is not selected on the project. Go back to Step 1.
• It changed my content. Say so plainly: "Keep my words exactly. Only change the design." Then point to the slide.
• Every slide still looks the same. Name the slides and name the layouts you want. Vague asks get vague results.
• The animations disappeared. You exported to PDF or PowerPoint. Present from Claude or export HTML.
• It is using a lot of usage. Long decks, big models and large attached repositories all cost more. Work on one section at a time if you are close to your limit.

Where the DIY version stops

Everything above gets you one great deck. That is worth a lot. A deck that looks like you wins the room.

But notice what you are still doing by hand. You still write the content. You still rebuild it for every new client. You still copy the numbers across from your notes.

The next step is a deck that builds itself. You make one excellent proposal deck by hand, then Claude learns its shape: which slides never change, which ones change for every client, and where each number comes from. After that, you give it a call recording and it produces the next client's deck in your brand. You review and present.

That is the kind of system we build at Whitehorse AI, usually on top of a company brain that already knows your clients, your pricing and your proof. If you have got to the end of this and thought "I want that for my business", reply to my newsletter with the word audit and I will tell you how we would start.

Start here

Build the design system today, even if you have no deck to make yet. It is the part that compounds.

Then take the deck you are least proud of, attach it, and paste the prompt from Step 3. Pick Opus 5.5, press send, and give it five minutes.

Built by Alex Sidhu, Whitehorse AI.