I was in Canva last week building a carousel, and thirty minutes in I had something that looked like a person who is not a designer made it. That person is me. Design has never been my thing and it shows every time I open that app.

So I stopped and built a skill instead. Now I find a carousel on Instagram whose design I like, drop the link in, and it rebuilds that look in my brand colors and my fonts, using copy I already wrote and approved.

Thirty minutes of pushing boxes around turned into one link.

The AI Move

The reason this works has nothing to do with design software. It comes down to splitting the job in two.

Most people open AI and ask it to make them a carousel. What comes back is generic, because AI is guessing at what to say and how it should look at the same time, and it usually misses on both.

So I stopped asking for both. The words come from my own bank, already written in my voice, already approved. The brand comes from a design system I set up once in Claude Design and have not touched since. That leaves AI the one part it does well, which is studying a layout and rebuilding its structure.

Point at what you want. Hand over what you already have.

This runs on more than carousels. A landing page whose layout you love. An email format that reads clean. A one pager a client sent you that you wish yours looked like. Screenshot it, hand it over with your own words, and ask for the structure in your brand.

The pieces you already have are usually the good part.

This week's prompt

Open Claude Design and give it two things: the design you want to copy, and the words you already wrote. Then paste this.

Rebuild this reference layout using my design system and the copy below. Match its structure: how many sections, where the headline sits, the white space rhythm, the type personality, and any repeating devices like underlines, arrows, or slide counters. Skip its colors and skip its words. Keep my copy exactly as written. Deliver the slides as PNGs I can download.

Reference: [paste the link or attach the screenshot]

My copy: [paste your text]

If you have not saved a design system yet, add one line with your fonts and your hex colors and it will hold them for the rest of the build.