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Apr 24, 2026 · Taste Test

Slide Deck Recipes with Claude Design

Take a four-slide source deck and remake it three ways: a baseline AI draft, a Cowork session with a custom SCU skill, and a polished Claude Design output with a full design system. Plus a bonus on combining AI services via API.

Presenter: Kai Lukoff · Lucas 306 · 1:30 to 5:00 p.m. · Tutorial at 2:30

Learning goals

By the end of the session, you should be able to:

  • Pick between a Cowork skill and Claude Design based on whether you need consistency at scale or single-deck polish.
  • Apply the four recipes (anchor to a template, specify slide types, provide design tokens, iterate at the slide level) to any AI slide tool.
  • Install and use a custom skill in Claude Cowork to convert a deck to an institutional brand.
  • Set up a basic design system in Claude Design (colors, fonts, voice) and regenerate a deck against it.
  • Recognize how AI tools compose (e.g., Claude orchestrating Gemini for palette-matched images) and where the pattern transfers next.

Slides & recording

Missed the session or want to revisit? The deck and the talk recording are below.

Slides

Open in Google Slides ↗

Recording

Watch on YouTube ↗

Starter kit

Grab these before the exercises. Everything you need to install the skill, convert the sample deck, and experiment with Claude Design on your own.

.pptx · Source
Sample deck (SCU template)
The four-slide AI Kitchen deck in the stock SCU template. Use as the input for both exercises.
.pptx · Baseline
Claude out of the box
What Claude produces with no brand context: generic, unbranded, fine but forgettable.
.pptx · SCU skill
Claude Cowork + SCU skill
The same source, on-brand: SCU Red, Bronco Red, Adobe Light, Figtree, Crimson Pro, logos in the right places.
.zip · SCU skill
SCU brand skill
Upload this ZIP to Claude Cowork (Customize → Skills → Upload a skill) to reproduce the branded output.
.md · Prompt
Conversion prompt
A short prompt you can paste into Cowork to convert any deck using the SCU skill.
.md · Design tokens
SCU design tokens
Colors, fonts, and voice notes you can paste into Claude Design to bootstrap a design system.

Tutorial outline

Four stages, same source content, visibly different outputs. The progression shows what changes when you give Claude more design context.

2:30-2:35
Open
The problem: consistency at scale across a course, not one pretty slide.
2:35-2:48
Stage 1 · Baseline
Claude with no brand context. Competent but generic.
2:48-3:00
Stage 2 · Cowork + SCU skill
Same input, SCU-branded output. The skill is ~200 lines of encoded institutional knowledge.
3:00-3:12
Stage 3 · Claude Design
A design system, not a skill. Richer visual polish for single decks. Different sweet spot.
3:12-3:20
Stage 4 · Composability
Claude orchestrating Gemini for palette-matched images. The pattern generalizes to voice, data, and more.
3:20-3:30
Four recipes & handoff
Summarize the transferable techniques, then move to the hands-on exercises.

The four recipes

Transferable techniques, tool-agnostic. They work in Cowork, Claude Design, or any AI slide tool you pick up next year.

Recipe 1
Anchor to a template
Upload a .pptx or a reference image. Don't describe the template in prose.
Recipe 2
Specify slide types
"Title, then two-column, then bullets, then CTA" beats "make slides about X."
Recipe 3
Provide design tokens
Hex codes, font names, voice adjectives. Pass the style guide as context, not hope.
Recipe 4
Iterate at the slide level
First pass is a draft. Refine one slide at a time with targeted edits.

Hands-on exercises

You'll need a Claude Pro account for both. Both exercises use separate usage buckets, so they won't exhaust your chat limits.

Exercise 1: Convert a deck with the SCU skill

Target time: 30 min · Uses: Claude Cowork
  1. Open Claude Cowork on your Pro account.
  2. Go to Customize → Skills → "+" → "Upload a skill".
  3. Upload scu-presentation.zip from the starter kit above.
  4. Enable the skill (toggle it on).
  5. Start a new Cowork session. Upload sample-deck-source.pptx.
  6. Paste the conversion prompt (from the starter kit) and run it.
  7. Compare the output to the baseline "out of the box" version.
  8. Extension: edit one slide's prompt to change the tone or layout. Regenerate just that slide.
Skill won't install? Check that the ZIP contains a folder with a SKILL.md at the root, not nested inside another folder. Kai is circulating during the exercise if you get stuck.

Exercise 2: Make it your own with Claude Design

Target time: 30 min · Uses: Claude Design (separate weekly bucket from chat)
  1. Open Claude Design on your Pro account.
  2. Set up a quick design system for a brand you invent or pick: your club, a fake coffee shop, an 80s arcade, a zine aesthetic, whatever. Two to three colors, a font vibe, a voice adjective.
  3. Use the same four-slide AI Kitchen content as the input.
  4. Let Claude Design regenerate the deck in your new identity.
  5. Swap screens with a neighbor. Compare.
  6. Reflection: same content, same model, very different output. What moved the needle?
The lesson: content stays constant, design system does the work. Design tokens are modular and swappable. Recipe 3 in the wild.

Going further

Session led by Kai Lukoff, Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at Santa Clara University.
Questions? klukoff@scu.edu.