skill creation
the challenges
Figma and PowerPoint have different ways of handling content, and so does Claude. Figma thinks in pixels and PowerPoint thinks in inches, while Claude tries to translate from one software to the other in a Linux environment, making the conversion process complex. Finding ways to convert font sizes, positions shadows and corner radius of all elements was a trial and error process that allowed me to understand how each software works and how to troubleshoot when the output was not what I was expecting. On the other hand, I had to make sure Merkle’s branding was applied correctly all along, translating the brand guidelines into cleaner and sharper instructions for Claude to use when building slides from scratch. These instructions should also help Claude adhere to the PowerPoint’s master themes already used in most of the decks from the company, letting users edit the content using native PowerPoint features.
user needs
Non-designers: Create presentations that adhere to brand guidelines without having to worry about working on each designed slide individually. Being able to trust the skill enough to know assistance from the information design team might still be needed but for minor details only, instead of full deck editing.
Designers: Have easy knowledge and visibility of all the templates and components available to create presentations. Improve reviewing time of Claude generated decks by other teams, either by having tools that help clean and improve them or getting cleaner decks from the start.
the process
I worked in two different skills: The first one is designed to handle and apply Merkle’s brand assets and the existing PowerPoint templates to content created from scratch via Claude, with restyle and rebuild approaches based on the complexity of each deck. The second one uses Figma components to explain to Claude how to properly build certain layouts and page styles, serving both as source of truth and a conversion tool to allow designers to consistently add preset components to PowerPoint decks.
merkle's brand guidelines
For this skill I started with Claude’s default skill for .ppt files and then modified the sections of it that were not aligning with the brand. The longest part of the process was a set of tests performed using different decks and prompts to understand how powerful was Claude at editing this type of content with no extra instructions from a designer.
I ran into a few issues regarding master template matching, headlines being recognized as such and some hardcoded values that were still coming from the original .ppt skill. The skill is now published as a company wide available tool and I’ve been able to test it with different types of content, streamlining the design process for the Information Design team.
figma to powerpoint
Considering my experience with the first skill and that this one would need a different approach, I used Figma’s AI Agents to structure the first draft of the skill and removed all non-natural language to be able to understand and edit it myself. I focused on creating conversion scales and specific instructions that could handle the different way objects are build in each software, and worked with the Information Design team and the designers that focus on Powerpoint projects to add enough font styles to match their existing decks.
Since there’s a big collection of PowerPoint decks created by the team over the past years, the amount of layouts and pieces they use to build are more than what’s usually available in a design system built for this purpose. Considering my experience building a similar system to manage Figma Presentations and microsites, I’m currently documenting and understanding how can I give the team the possibility to build as many page types as they’re used to without compromising the efficient setup and Atomic design approach of the project.
the future
This project has been my first real world approach to working with AI tools such as Claude and Figma’s Agents for more than just checking if the spelling is right or organizing a few items on the canvas. With each stage I understand better how each software works, the limitations we still have when creating IA focused projects and the heavy amount of testing we need to do for each stage. We don’t know yet if the vision we have is something we can achieve — having a full functioning Figma library that translates to PowerPoint slides with a few prompts — but each technical block so far has been a pivoting opportunity, not an ending.
— final thoughts
Working on this project myself has been an interesting way of learning about AI and what it can actually do when designing with and for non-designers. I’ve been polishing my writing skills through prompting — an unexpected win — and I learned lots of things about how each program is natively built, understanding better how to work across them and more importantly how to help others work in easier and better ways with it.
