I Finally Found a Way to Create Good Slides With AI
⏱️ Read time: ~2.5 min
For a long time, I had a fairly firm opinion about AI and slides:
My years of PowerPoint experience still beat whatever AI could produce.
The first AI-generated slide decks I experimented with were not merely imperfect. They were genuinely bad. The layouts were awkward at best, and the visual output was nowhere near something I would want to put in front of an audience. The storytelling was weak, no matter how good my input.
That started to change when tools such as Beautiful.ai and Gamma entered the market.
For the first time, AI could help create slides that looked clean and well-crafted, even if it still could not reliably handle the job end to end.
As someone working for myself, I do not have unlimited time to turn a solid idea into a clean presentation. My workflow became simple: I created the outline in Langdock, then used Gamma to turn it into polished slides.
That alone was a huge win.
What finally changed
Then came Claude Design. It was useful for ideation, especially when I wanted to explore what a particular slide could look like.
But it did not quite become part of my regular workflow. The output was interesting, but the process did not feel as natural or enjoyable to me.
Recently, though, I started experimenting with something different: building my own slide system in HTML.
And this is the first time I am ready to call it a genuine game changer.
I can develop the narrative, test ideas, and create clean, sleek slides in one flow. The system works with my brand and my preferred visual language. It adapts to the format too, whether I am preparing slides for a live presentation or creating a slide report. I have now extended it to include report templates as well.
Most importantly, it works with me. It helps me sharpen an idea, move through the story, and turn it into slides that feel like mine.
What AI still does not solve
There is an important caveat here. Garbage in, garbage out.
No AI can rescue a presentation with no real idea behind it. Beautifully polished slides do not make weak content valuable, and they do not create a clear message where there is none.
The same applies to design. If you do not have a clear design system or a strong sense of your brand, AI may produce slides that look polished at first glance, but they will not necessarily look like you.
That is the human work.
You need the point of view, the message, the story, and the standards. AI can support the process brilliantly, but it cannot replace the thinking that makes a presentation worth watching or reading.
Key Takeaway
The best use of AI for presentations is not handing over your expertise. It is building a workflow where your expertise stays in charge, while AI removes the repetitive work around it.
If you create slides regularly, ask yourself: where does your process still break the flow between idea, story, and design?
Here’s to fewer formatting rabbit holes and more time for the ideas that matter.
Elena
P.S. Would a free session on this workflow be useful to you? Hit reply and let me know.
