Press Kit

What if every modern brand had opened in 1976?

Modern Retro reimagines 100 of today's best-known brands as 1970s high-street shops. Each brand gets one AI-generated storefront, its own store page and an MRA Score for how absurd it would have been to find it on a high street in 1976.

The idea is founding mythology: the energy a brand had before the product, the IPO or the algorithm. Coinbase as a bureau de change. Netflix as a video rental. Anthropic as a research institute lobby.

MODERN RETRO: PRESS BRIEF
What it is: 100 of today's best-known brands reimagined as 1970s high-street shops, one AI-generated storefront per brand, each with its own store page and an MRA (Modern Retro Absurdity) Score.
The question: What if every modern brand had opened its first shop in 1976?
The scale: 100 brands across 12 sectors, from Anthropic and OpenAI to Liquid Death, Palace and Pudgy Penguins.
The story: The first 100 images were made in February 2026 with FLUX.1 [dev], a model that could only redraw, never edit. It took 39 redo scripts. In September 2026, seven months later, all 100 were redone with Google's Nano Banana 2, an editing model, for about 15 pounds. 86 of them from a single shared instruction; one was sent back.
The tools: FLUX.1 [dev] (Black Forest Labs) and Nano Banana 2 (Google), both via fal.ai. Run with Claude Code (Anthropic).
The output: A web gallery at modernretro.art with 100 store pages and the MRA Score ranking.
Creator: Mike Litman, London. Creative strategist and AI product builder, 15+ years in digital creative strategy at agencies including R/GA, Poke, Dare and AnalogFolk.
Contact: hello@mikelitman.me
Live site: https://modernretro.art

100

Brands featured

12

Sectors covered

7

Months between versions

~£15

To redo all 100

The Story

The Question

Every brand has a mythology that predates its product.

Nike before the Swoosh. Apple before the Mac. Spotify before the algorithm. Modern Retro starts from a single provocation: what if that founding energy had arrived fifty years earlier? What would the shop look like?

The First Version

100 shops, 39 redo scripts.

In February 2026 every image came from FLUX.1 [dev], a model that could only redraw a picture, never edit one. Fixing a sign meant starting again. One shop reached round ten. Two misspelt signs, LITLE MOONS and BEEHIV, went live anyway.

The Redo

Seven months later, the work was judgement.

In September 2026 a newer model, Google's Nano Banana 2, fixed the signs and recoloured the other 86 shops into their own brand colours from one shared instruction. Mike reviewed all 86 on a single page and sent one back. It cost about 15 pounds.

Lede Options

Three ways to open the story

Ready to use. Lift and edit as needed.

Culture / Nostalgia

There is a specific uncanniness to seeing Liquid Death as a 1970s beverage parlour, or Spotify as a record bar with a handwritten chart on the wall. Modern Retro, a creative project by London-based strategist Mike Litman, has reimagined 100 modern brands as 1970s high-street shops. The results are immediately recognisable, slightly wrong, and unexpectedly moving.

Technology / Seven months on

In February 2026, getting 100 AI images of modern brands as 1970s shops right took 39 redo scripts, and two misspelt signs still went live. Seven months later the same 100 were redone in about a day, for about 15 pounds. Modern Retro, built independently by London strategist Mike Litman, is a like-for-like record of how quickly the tools moved, and of what they still cannot do: decide what is good.

Data / Investigative

Which modern brands actually belong in 1976, and which ones have always existed in some form? Modern Retro, a creative project that reimagines 100 brands as 1970s retail stores, has built a scoring system to answer that question. Crypto protocols and AI companies score highest. Outdoor brands and sportswear score lowest. The gap between them reveals something real about which companies are genuinely new.

Story Angles

Six ways to tell this story

Culture

The nostalgia hit your FYP never knew it needed

Modern Retro taps into something real: the brands that define life in 2026 feel very new, very frictionless, very screen-based. Seeing them as worn wooden shopfronts with hand-painted signs triggers an uncanny recognition. These are the shops our parents would have visited if the internet had existed in 1976. The images work because they resolve a tension people feel but cannot quite name.

Technology

Seven months, two models, the same 100 shops

In February 2026 the images came from a text-to-image model that could not edit: 39 redo scripts, one shop on round ten, a shopfront spliced together from two attempts. In September a newer editing model redid all 100 in about a day. 86 came from one shared instruction and one was sent back. A rare like-for-like look at how far these tools moved in seven months.

Design

What a brand looks like before it knew what it was

The most interesting images are the ones where the brand identity survives the translation. Liquid Death is still aggressive, even as a 1970s beverage parlour. Erewhon is still precious, even with a hand-drawn chalk menu. The exercise reveals what is essential in a brand versus what is surface: and that distinction is genuinely useful for anyone who works in marketing or brand strategy.

Business

When making gets cheap, judgement is the job

Redoing 100 images cost about 15 pounds. The expensive part was deciding what to keep. Modern Retro treats AI images as renders with a shelf life rather than finished pictures: keep the recipe, go back every six months, redo what has aged. For anyone commissioning AI work, the question moves from "can it be made" to "who decides it is right".

Human Interest

The strategist who went back and fixed his own typos

Two of Mike Litman's original shop signs were misspelt, LITLE MOONS and BEEHIV, and sat on the site for months before he noticed. Seven months on he redid all 100 images, reviewed them on a single page with a Good or Redo button under each, and pressed Redo once. A project built by one person, corrected in public.

Data / Investigative

Which modern brands translate to 1976? The data is revealing.

Modern Retro uses a proprietary scoring system (the MR Score) to rate brands on "absurdity of existing in the 1970s." The highest-scoring brands: Coinbase, MetaMask, Perplexity, OpenAI. The lowest: Nike, Patagonia, IKEA. The gap between them tells you something about which modern brands are truly new versus which ones are just the latest version of something that has always existed.

Quotes

From the creator

Available for use, attributed to Mike Litman, founder of Modern Retro.

Primary quote

"Every brand has a founding energy that predates the product. I wanted to see what that energy looked like as a shop. The images that work best are the ones where something is slightly off, slightly too perfect, slightly too 1976 to be real. That uncanniness is not a bug. It is the point."

Mike Litman, Creator, Modern Retro

On AI and judgement

"In February the hard part was getting the model to make the thing. In September it was deciding what to send back. I reviewed 86 new images on one page and pressed Redo once. The model does the rendering now. The judgement is still the job."

Mike Litman, Creator, Modern Retro

On the seven-month redo

"Two of my original signs were misspelt, LITLE MOONS and BEEHIV, and they sat on the site for months. Seven months later a newer model fixed them and recoloured the other 86 in each brand's own colours, for about fifteen pounds. These are not finished pictures any more. They are renders with a shelf life."

Mike Litman, Creator, Modern Retro

Data

100 brands by sector

The Modern Retro collection spans 12 sectors. Tech and AI brands score highest on the MR Score (absurdity of existing in 1976). Fashion and outdoor brands score lowest.

Sector	Brands	Example brands	MR Score range
Tech / AI / Software	17	Anthropic, OpenAI, Midjourney, Perplexity	82-96
Fashion / Apparel	15	Balenciaga, KITH, Off-White, Palace, Supreme	44-71
Food / Drink / Wellness	14	Liquid Death, Oatly, Tony's Chocolonely, Erewhon	55-88
Crypto / Web3	9	Coinbase, MetaMask, BAYC, Ledger, OpenSea	90-98
Fitness / Health	9	Peloton, WHOOP, Oura, On Running, Neko Health	62-84
Social / Media / Content	12	Netflix, Spotify, Substack, TikTok, Discord	48-79
Finance / Fintech	5	Stripe, Revolut, Monzo, Wise	70-88
Gaming / Kids / Entertainment	5	Nintendo, LEGO, Tonies, Yoto	38-62
Big Tech / Platforms	7	Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta	55-74
DTC / Consumer	7	Gymshark, Huel, Calm, Eight Sleep, Heights	60-82

Press Release

Ready to use

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MODERN RETRO REDOES ALL 100 AI SHOPFRONTS, SEVEN MONTHS ON
Creative project that reimagines modern brands as 1970s shops rebuilds its collection with a newer AI model, for about 15 pounds

LONDON, September 2026. Modern Retro, the creative project that reimagines 100 of today's best-known brands as 1970s high-street shops, has redone every image in its collection seven months after it first launched.

The original images were made in February 2026 with FLUX.1 [dev], a model that could only redraw a picture, never edit one. Getting them right took 39 separate redo scripts, and two misspelt shop signs, LITLE MOONS and BEEHIV, still went live. In September all 100 were redone with Google's Nano Banana 2, an editing model: 14 were corrected and the other 86 recoloured into each brand's own palette from a single shared instruction. The whole redo cost about 15 pounds.

The project was created by Mike Litman, a London-based creative strategist and AI product builder with 15+ years of experience at agencies including R/GA, Poke, Dare and AnalogFolk, working with clients including Nike, Google, Netflix, Sony and Meta.

"In February the hard part was getting the model to make the thing," said Litman. "In September it was deciding what to send back. I reviewed 86 new images on one page and pressed Redo once. The judgement is still the job."

The site includes 100 individual store pages, each with an MRA (Modern Retro Absurdity) Score rating how absurd the brand would have been in 1976.

About Modern Retro
Modern Retro is a creative project by Mike Litman / Cultural Capital Labs. Live at modernretro.art.

Contact: hello@mikelitman.me

Social Copy

Pre-written, one click

Content Links

Direct links

Live Gallery

Browse all 100 brand stores

Example Store Page

Netflix as a 1970s video rental (one of 100)

Creator Portfolio

Mike Litman: full project archive

For Journalists

For your piece

Interview, the before-and-after grid and the process notes

Working on a piece about Modern Retro or AI in creative work? Available: an interview with Mike Litman, a high-resolution grid of all 100 shops in February and in September, the February versus September process notes, and the full MRA Score dataset. Contact hello@mikelitman.me with your brief and publication.

About

The creator

Background

Mike Litman is a London-based creative strategist and AI product builder. He has 15+ years of experience in digital creative strategy, working at agencies including R/GA, Poke, Dare, and AnalogFolk. He founded Burst, his own creative studio, before moving into independent AI product development. Modern Retro is a Cultural Capital Labs project.

Credentials

BIMA 100 Tech Pioneer. Published author (BCS, 2024). Clients have included Nike, Adidas, Google, Meta, Gucci, BMW, P&G, EA, Netflix, Sony, TikTok, McLaren, and Unilever. Modern Retro is one of 20+ live AI-native projects built independently since 2025.

hello@mikelitman.me

Available for interview and demos.