About this design
Where the Expedition style comes from, and what it signals.
Expedition takes its structure from cartography. Each slide sits inside a surveyor's frame: a 1.5px sepia rectangle inset 20px from the edge, a thinner inner rule, and latitude-and-longitude tick marks every 60px along all four sides. Faint sepia blotches in the background are large soft radial-gradient spots at 10% opacity, the kind of age staining you see on a chart that has been folded and refolded.
The single typeface is EB Garamond, a Google Font drawn from sixteenth-century punch-cut originals. Headings are in sepia ink #4A3B28, place names and asides are italic, small labels are in uppercase wax red #A33B2E. The dashed route line, 1.5px sepia with a 7-6 dash pattern and a solid arrowhead, organizes agendas and timelines: numbered port circles mark each stop, and the key port fills in wax red. A compass rose with sepia points and a red north needle appears in the corner of title and data slides.
The palette keeps it from reading as a museum exhibit. A single typeface and two colors prevent it from becoming costume. Use it for lectures, cultural presentations, historical retrospectives, and narrative arcs where a journey with known stops is the point.
Use it for
- History and humanities lectures with a journey narrative
- Brand story and company origin retrospectives
- Educational workshop series across multiple sessions
- Travel, hospitality, or geography conference talks
- Long-form narrative pitches with a clear beginning and end
Skip it for
- Financial or data-heavy presentations; the warm parchment palette makes dense tables hard to read
- Audiences expecting modern sans-serif typography; EB Garamond is an assertive choice that some rooms will find dated
The slide design prompt
This is the exact text that gets sent to your AI.
Design slides as a vintage exploration map, the 'Expedition' theme. Background: parchment #F0E6D2 with two or three faint sepia blotches, large soft radial-gradient spots near 10 percent opacity. Every slide carries a border frame: a 1.5px sepia #4A3B28 rectangle inset about 20px with a thinner inner rule, plus small latitude and longitude tick marks every 60px along all four edges. Typography: 'EB Garamond' (a Google Font) as the single face throughout; headings in sepia ink #4A3B28; place names and asides in italic 'EB Garamond'; tiny uppercase labels in wax red #A33B2E. Signature motifs: a dashed route line, 1.5px sepia with a 7 6 dash pattern ending in a solid arrowhead, connecting numbered port circles (1.5px sepia outline, the key port filled wax red #A33B2E), used for agendas and timelines; an 8-point compass rose in one corner with sepia points and the north needle in #A33B2E. Strictly avoid: photographs, drop shadows, blue water fills, modern sans-serif headlines, rounded cards, any color beyond parchment, sepia, and the single wax red. 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 Expedition 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 Expedition on-style while the content changes.
- 04
Or skip straight to a deck
SlideSpeak turns your topic or document into a finished Expedition presentation, exportable as PowerPoint or PDF.
Common questions
Working with the Expedition slide design prompt in practice.
