About this design
Where the Memo style comes from, and what it signals.
Memo takes the interoffice memorandum literally. The TO/FROM/DATE/RE header, the double-rule that separates it from the body, the legal outline numbering and the 'Privileged and Confidential' footer are all reproduced from the actual office memo form, which predates email by most of a century. The RE line in red is the only color on the page until the highlight appears.
Typography is Libre Caslon Text, a revival of the Caslon letterforms that dominated American printing and legal documents for most of the 19th century. Body text runs at 15 to 16px on a 1.7 leading, set in charcoal #232323 on warm paper white #FFFEF9. One sentence per slide is swept with a translucent yellow highlight at #FCE588 at 60 percent opacity; red #B3372F appears once per slide at most, on the RE line or a key figure.
The tone is dry, precise and a little arch: a slide deck that knows it is pretending to be a memo and commits to it. It works for process documentation, operations reports, internal policy decks and any subject that benefits from the implication that what follows has been thought through carefully.
Use it for
- Operations and process documentation decks
- Internal policy recommendations requiring formal structure
- Audit findings and compliance reports styled for leadership
- Transformation program updates presented as formal memoranda
Skip it for
- External client pitches; the internal-document aesthetic reads as unfinished to outside audiences
- Creative or brand contexts where the deliberate dryness will be mistaken for a lack of effort
The slide design prompt
This is the exact text that gets sent to your AI.
Create a presentation in the 'Memo' theme, an interoffice memorandum styled as slides. Background: warm paper white (#FFFEF9). Typography: 'Libre Caslon Text' (a Google Font) serif throughout; body 15 to 16px in charcoal (#232323) with leading near 1.7; headers in letterspaced uppercase caps. Signature motifs: a memo header with MEMORANDUM in small caps tracked at 0.45em above ruled rows TO, FROM, DATE and RE with typed serif values, the RE line in red (#B3372F); a thin double rule, two 1px charcoal lines 1px apart, under every header; recommendations numbered in legal outline style (1.0, 1.1, 2.0) with sub items hanging indented 56px; exactly one sentence per slide swept with a translucent yellow highlight, #FCE588 at 60 percent opacity. Footer: PRIVILEGED & CONFIDENTIAL in 8px tracked caps with a page count. Red (#B3372F) appears once per slide at most. Strictly avoid: sans serif headlines, photographs, icons, filled charts, more than one highlight per slide, any accent color beyond the one 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 Memo 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 Memo on-style while the content changes.
- 04
Or skip straight to a deck
SlideSpeak turns your topic or document into a finished Memo presentation, exportable as PowerPoint or PDF.
Common questions
Working with the Memo slide design prompt in practice.
