About this design
Where the Metro style comes from, and what it signals.
Metro takes the transit map as its structural metaphor. Harry Beck's 1931 London Underground diagram made something radical: it discarded geographic accuracy in favor of topological clarity, reducing a tangled network to clean 45 and 90 degree lines with evenly spaced stations. Metro applies that logic to slide structure, using route lines as timelines, station dots as agenda items and interchanges as section breaks.
The typefaces are Barlow Condensed for headlines and Barlow for body text, both condensed grotesque fonts that echo station signage in transit systems worldwide. Four route colors carry the visual load: red #E03A3E, blue #0072BC, green #00A65A and yellow #F8B500, separated by white station dots with 3px #1A1A1A rings on pure white backgrounds. Route lines are 10px with rounded caps and clean angle joints, with no gradients, no shadows and no freeform curves.
The metaphor earns its keep when the content has a sequential or network structure: roadmaps, project timelines, agenda flows and any deck genuinely about how you get from one place to another.
Use it for
- Product roadmaps and release timelines
- Project kick-offs with phased delivery milestones
- Quarterly business reviews with a clear stage gate structure
- Onboarding decks where the journey metaphor is literal
Skip it for
- Data-dense analysis slides; the route-line motif crowds with more than two chart types
- Audiences who have not seen the metro metaphor explained; section dividers need a brief orientation
The slide design prompt
This is the exact text that gets sent to your AI.
Create a presentation in the 'Metro' theme, built from transit-map design language. Background: pure white (#FFFFFF). Typography: headlines in bold 'Barlow Condensed' like station signage, body in 'Barlow' (both Google Fonts), ink #1A1A1A, secondary text #5A5A5A. Signature motifs: thick 10px route lines with rounded caps and clean 45 or 90 degree bends in four metro colors, red #E03A3E, blue #0072BC, green #00A65A, yellow #F8B500; station dots, 18px white circles with 3px #1A1A1A rings, sitting directly on the lines; interchanges drawn as a larger double ring, a 30px circle with a concentric 16px inner ring; circular line badges, 30px solid-color circles with one bold white character. Draw the agenda and the timeline AS metro lines: one horizontal route with evenly spaced stations, bold labels alternating above and below the line. Section slides: two routes crossing at an interchange, the section name in a white box with a 3px #1A1A1A border. Strictly avoid: gradients, shadows, photographs, thin or wavy lines, stations floating off their lines, more than four route colors. 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 Metro 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 Metro on-style while the content changes.
- 04
Or skip straight to a deck
SlideSpeak turns your topic or document into a finished Metro presentation, exportable as PowerPoint or PDF.
Common questions
Working with the Metro slide design prompt in practice.
