About this design
Where the McKinsey Style style comes from, and what it signals.
McKinsey Style is inspired by the publicly recognized conventions of top-tier strategy consulting decks: the action title, the contents tracker, the waterfall bridge and the sourced footer. The Minto pyramid, the SCQA structure and the preference for serif action titles have been discussed in business schools for decades. This theme makes those conventions available as a prompt, with no affiliation claimed.
The design is disciplined to the point of austerity. Deep navy #051C2C headings in Gelasio, a Georgia-style bookish serif, face neutral sans-serif body in Arimo at slate #4E5B66 on plain white. Electric blue #2251FF appears exactly once per slide, marking the takeaway: a blue left-border box opening 'Bottom line:' or the key bar in a chart. The waterfall bridge is the signature chart type, with navy bars for baseline, blue for positive moves, dashed outlines for forecast values, value labels directly on the bars and no y-axis.
The deck suits situations where the audience needs to trust the process as much as the answer: steering committees, M&A strategy presentations, board investment cases and any meeting where the analytical work must be visible in the structure of the slides.
Use it for
- M&A, strategy and investment case recommendations
- Steering committee and board presentations
- Consulting deliverables that must look audit-ready
- Operating plan reviews requiring sourced financial charts
Skip it for
- Creative pitches or brand decks; the strict grid reads as overpowered for that context
- Quick internal updates where Boardroom or Memo is sufficient
The slide design prompt
This is the exact text that gets sent to your AI.
Create a presentation in the 'McKinsey Style' theme, an unofficial homage to the classic top-tier strategy consulting deck. Background: white (#FFFFFF). Typography: action titles in 'Gelasio', a bookish Georgia-style serif, regular weight, deep navy (#051C2C); body and labels in the neutral Arial-style sans-serif 'Arimo' (both Google Fonts), slate gray (#4E5B66); electric blue (#2251FF) is the only accent and appears once per slide to mark the takeaway. Every content slide opens with a full-sentence action title stating the slide's conclusion, under 15 words, never more than 2 lines, the largest text on the slide, with an optional short gray lead-in line beneath and a 1px #D6DEE6 rule under both. Title slide: full-bleed deep navy (#051C2C) background, a motif of thin electric blue horizontal lines of varying length, white serif title under 8 words, subtitle and date in muted blue-gray, plus 'Confidential and proprietary' in tiny letterspaced caps. A 'Contents' slide reappears before each section as a tracker: the current section bold navy on a light #F0F4F8 band with a 3px electric blue left border, all other sections muted gray. Title and closing slides carry a logo placeholder: a dashed 1px box labeled 'YOUR LOGO' in letterspaced caps. Charts follow firm conventions: a two-part chart header (bold navy descriptor, then a gray units line such as '$ millions'), value labels directly on bars, no gridlines and no y-axis, gray #8FA9BD bars with the key series electric blue, forecast values drawn as dashed outlines, numbered superscript footnotes, and a waterfall bridge as the signature chart. Footer on every slide: 8px footnotes and 'Source: ...' bottom-left, 'Company | page number' bottom-right, above nothing but a hairline rule. Key takeaways sit in #F0F4F8 boxes with a 3px electric blue left border, opening 'Bottom line:'. Next-step bullets start with imperative verbs. Strictly avoid: decorative imagery, gradients, drop shadows, rounded corners, more than one accent color, topic-label titles like 'Market overview', legends where direct bar labels work, claiming affiliation with McKinsey & Company. 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 McKinsey Style 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 McKinsey Style on-style while the content changes.
- 04
Or skip straight to a deck
SlideSpeak turns your topic or document into a finished McKinsey Style presentation, exportable as PowerPoint or PDF.
Common questions
Working with the McKinsey Style slide design prompt in practice.
