artist imagines spotify, youtube and instagram as retro anime gadgets

manchester-based artist and illustrator sheng lam has reimagined some of 2019’s biggest social media platforms and media sites as retro gadgets. using a fantastically 90s anime style, lam has created more than half a dozen renderings, including a facebook floppy drive, a spotify casette player and an instagram polaroid.

images courtesy of sheng lam

sheng lam’s anime-styled illustrations imagine what the likes of netflix and twitter would have looked like in a pre-internet age. each conceptual product is rendered with architectural precision, featuring swaths of primary color and geometric cues, similar to that of late 80s and early 90s sci-fi manga works like akira (1988) and ghost in the shell (1991).

the artist has come up with new names for each device that play on the original brand, like ‘phasebook’, ‘tweeter’ and ‘potify’. he has also imagined youtube as a VCR and soundcloud as a CD player. you can check out the high-res images over on sheng lam’s artstation page, and there are also prints available on inprnt.

project info

artist: sheng lam