About this design
Where the Basel style comes from, and what it signals.
Basel is a direct homage to the Swiss poster tradition of the 1950s and 1960s: Muller-Brockmann's grid, Helvetica's spiritual predecessor, the conviction that whitespace is the primary material and type is the image. It adapts that lineage to the slide format with one rule: if it is not type, a rule or the one red square, it has no place on the slide.
The single typeface is Archivo, a contemporary grotesque with tight tracking that earns its keep at headline sizes of around 20 percent of slide height. Lowercase, near-black #111111, with a leading of 0.92 and negative letter-spacing, so the characters lock together like a set slug. Swiss red #E32213 appears once per slide as a small square, a thick rule or a single colored character. A 3-column grid in warm gray #DAD5C8 vertical lines gives spatial order.
This is a serious design system from a tradition that considered ornamentation dishonest. Use it for creative studios, typographers, fashion labels, cultural institutions, or any situation where authority should come from restraint.
Use it for
- Creative and design studio credentials and case studies
- Brand identity presentations for fashion or cultural institutions
- Conference talks where the speaker is the content
- Type-heavy section dividers and manifesto-style decks
Skip it for
- Decks with more than two data slides; charts fight the typographic concept
- Corporate sales presentations; the austerity can read as unfriendly to non-designers
The slide design prompt
This is the exact text that gets sent to your AI.
Create a presentation in the style of a 1960s Swiss poster, the 'Basel' theme. Background: warm off-white (#F4F1EA). Typography: 'Archivo' (a Google Font), a tight grotesque sans used everywhere; headlines enormous (around 20 percent of slide height), lowercase, near-black (#111111), with negative letter-spacing and leading near 0.92. One accent only: Swiss red (#E32213), used once per slide as a small square, a thick rule, or a single character. Structure: a visible 3-column grid drawn with thin warm-gray vertical lines, and a 3px black rule across the top of every slide carrying small uppercase metadata (deck name left, slide number right). Charts are solid black rectangles with the key bar in red and a 4px black baseline, no other axis decoration. Section breaks: solid black slide, giant white numeral, one red bar. Strictly avoid: rounded corners, drop shadows, gradients, icons, photographs, any third color. Whitespace is the decoration. Use this theme for my slides. Ask me what the presentation is about first, then apply the theme to every slide.View this prompt and its data on GitHub
How to use this prompt
From copied text to a finished Basel deck in four moves.
- 01
Copy the prompt
Use the copy button, or open it pre-filled in Claude or ChatGPT with one click from the panel on this page.
- 02
Tell the AI your topic
The prompt instructs the AI to ask what your presentation is about first. A sentence or a pasted outline is enough.
- 03
Generate and iterate
Ask for more slides or swap a layout. The avoid list at the end of the prompt keeps Basel on-style while the content changes.
- 04
Or skip straight to a deck
SlideSpeak turns your topic or document into a finished Basel presentation, exportable as PowerPoint or PDF.
Common questions
Working with the Basel slide design prompt in practice.
