About this design
Where the TED Style style comes from, and what it signals.
TED Style borrows the publicly documented conventions of the modern main-stage talk: a black stage instead of a white page, one idea per slide, statements set huge, and a single red accent doing all the emphatic work. TED's own speaker guidance tells presenters to cut bullets, cut text, and treat slides as a backdrop rather than a document, and this theme encodes that advice as hard layout rules. It is an unofficial homage; not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by TED Conferences LLC.
Every slide sits on near-black #0a0a0a with Inter as the only typeface, pushed to weights 800 and 900 for statements. Red #e62b1e, the shade long associated with the TED brand, appears on exactly one element per slide: a pivotal word, a giant numeral, a short 4 to 6px rule, or the one chart bar that proves the point. Supporting text runs in #e8e8e8, sources and photo credits in #9c9c9c at caption sizes, and charts drop gridlines, legends and axes entirely so the headline carries the takeaway.
This is a speaker's format, not a reader's. Reach for it when a talk lives or dies on delivery: conference keynotes, launch moments, all-hands announcements, and teaching sessions built around one claim at a time. If the deck has to survive being read cold in an inbox, pick a document format instead.
Use it for
- Conference keynotes and main-stage talks where the speaker carries the argument
- Internal all-hands moments where one number or one decision has to land
- Fundraising and vision narratives told as a story rather than a data pack
- Guest lectures and teaching sessions built around one big claim per slide
Skip it for
- Dense data reviews or appendix-heavy board packs; one idea per slide fights a forty-exhibit analysis, use McKinsey Style instead
- Decks that circulate as documents and get read without a presenter; these slides are backdrops, use Memo for a self-explanatory leave-behind
- Bright rooms with weak projectors where a near-black background washes out; Seminar keeps a lecture legible on white
The presentation design prompt
This is the exact text that gets sent to your AI.
Create a presentation in the 'TED Style' theme, an homage to the dark-stage conference talk. Background: near-black (#0a0a0a) edge to edge, never white; cards, when unavoidable, are #161616 with a 1px #2a2a2a border. Typography: the neo-grotesque sans 'Inter' (Google Fonts) throughout, weights 800 and 900 for statements at 64 to 110px, tight leading, sentence case, lower-left or dead-centered. Red #e62b1e is the only accent and lands on one element per slide: a pivotal word, a giant numeral, a short rule, or one chart bar; everything else is white #ffffff, light gray #e8e8e8, or muted gray #9c9c9c. One idea per slide; sequential points become sequential slides and bullet points never appear. The signature motif is a short red rule, 4 to 6px tall and 64 to 120px wide, above or below the headline, plus a red uppercase Inter 700 kicker at 13px with 0.12em letter spacing. Title slide: lower-left block with the kicker, the Inter 900 white talk title at about 96px with one word in red, the red rule, then speaker name and role in #9c9c9c. Big-statement slides center one sentence in Inter 800 white at 72 to 88px with one red word. Giant-statistic slides set one red Inter 900 numeral at 180 to 260px, the unit at half size, one white line beneath, and a 13px gray source. Section breaks run full-bleed photos under a bottom-up black overlay gradient, with a ghosted red section numeral, one white line, and an 11px #9c9c9c photo credit bottom-left, the deck's only footer. Charts are redrawn native with one message: white and gray bars (#f5f5f5, #a6a6a6, #565656) with the single decisive bar in #e62b1e, white value labels on the bars, gray category labels, no gridlines, legend, or axis; the takeaway is the headline. The closer mirrors the title: one white imperative line with one red word and the speaker handle in gray. Keep 40 percent of every slide empty black and pad edges 80px or more. Strictly avoid: bullet points or list glyphs, a second accent color, light backgrounds, logos, page numbers, footer bars or date stamps, paragraphs or more than six lines of text, charts with gridlines, legends or axis boxes, body text below 24px, timid medium-weight headlines, gradients on shapes or text, drop shadows, 3D, rounded card grids, decorative icons, serif or novelty fonts, the TED or TEDx marks, the 'Ideas worth spreading' slogan, and claiming affiliation with TED Conferences LLC. 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 TED 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 TED Style on-style while the content changes.
- 04
Or skip straight to a deck
SlideSpeak turns your topic or document into a finished TED Style presentation, exportable as PowerPoint or PDF.
Common questions
Working with the TED Style presentation design prompt in practice.
