I used to block out two hours every Sunday just for carousels.
Write the copy. Open Canva. Pick a template that doesn't look like every other template. Resize eight times because slide five never matches slide one. Export. Re-export because the export cropped my headline.
Two hours. Every week. For content that took me five minutes to write.
Last month I opened Claude Design for the first time and built a full carousel in under fifteen minutes. Not a rough draft. A finished, on-brand, ready-to-post carousel.
Claude Design is Anthropic's visual content tool, and it does something Canva templates never could: it actually reads your brand and builds around it, instead of you bending your content to fit someone else's template.
This guide walks through exactly how I set mine up, the prompts I use, and where it still needs a human touch.
Step 1: Build your design system first.
Skip this step and you'll get generic AI output. I learned that the hard way on my first attempt.
Go to claude.ai/design and start a new project. Claude walks you through your design system component by component: colors, typography, spacing, logo usage.
Go through every single one. Don't rush it.
This is the part that actually separates a carousel that looks like you from a carousel that looks like every other AI-generated post on Instagram right now. Your design system is the memory. Everything downstream depends on it.
The reference image trick.
Attach a screenshot of a carousel style you actually like before you generate anything.
I keep a small folder of carousels that stopped my own scroll, saved from creators I follow. When I attach one and tell Claude to use it as a benchmark, the output gets noticeably closer to something I'd actually post. This step is optional. It's worth doing anyway.
Step 2: Turn content into a carousel outline.
Once your design system is saved, create a new project under it and give it a name.
Then hand Claude your raw material. A blog post. A newsletter section. A transcript from a video you already recorded. The prompt I use:
Use these links/files to learn about [your topic].
I want you to generate a 6-8 card carousel on this topic.
The cards must be structured like this:
1. First card: the heading, hook, scroll-stopping visual.
2. Cards 2-7: one specific step per card. Never combine two steps on one slide.
3. Last card: CTA to [your brand/newsletter].
I've attached a reference image to use as a benchmark.Claude proposes the full storyline before it generates anything. This is the moment to push back.
If the hook feels flat, say so. If a step needs to be split into two slides, say so. This is still a collaboration, not a vending machine.
Step 3: Generate, then iterate.
Once you approve the outline, Claude generates the actual slides.
Almost nobody nails it on the first pass. Most people need two to three rounds before the design looks intentional instead of assembled. I budget for that now instead of getting frustrated by it.
What actually works well:
→ Text-heavy carousels with a clean information hierarchy
→ Anything following your saved design system closely
→ Fast iteration once the system is in place, changing one slide doesn't break the other seven
Where it still struggles:
→ Screenshots and product images inside slides. If your carousel needs real UI screenshots, you'll likely still touch up in Canva or Figma afterward.
→ First attempts tend to burn a fair number of tokens before the output feels right.
→ It's still faster to think of Claude Design as the first eighty percent, not the whole carousel.
Step 4: Export and ship.
Once you're happy with the set, the export prompt is simple:
Export the carousel cards as PNG format.
Export the card only, not the background.
Export each card individually.Claude exports every slide as a separate file, sized correctly, ready to drag straight into Instagram or LinkedIn.
The workflow I actually run now.
I write the newsletter first, always. Then I take the same guide and prompt Claude Design directly: turn this into an 8-card carousel following my saved brand.
No new writing. No new thinking. The guide already did the hard part.
That's the real unlock here. It's not that Claude Design replaces a designer. It's that it removes the two hours between "I already wrote this" and "this is posted."
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