Code/Type/Music: Ranger & Fox for Microsoft Foundry Labs

ECD Stephen Panicara and the Ranger & Fox crew in LA injects plenty of personality and attitude into Microsoft Foundry Labs with this kinetic brand film designed for the 2026 Microsoft Build conference.

Stephen Panicara: Microsoft Foundry Labs is the candy store of AI experiments, where researchers can work with the latest from Microsoft Research and Azure AI teams. To accompany the teams’ announcements, we blended code, type, and music to showcase real-world applications of the product.
 

“We skipped the AI buzzwords and showed what the lab actually makes. We put the models themselves on screen, Aurora, MatterSim, TamGen, and let them do the talking.”

 
We skipped the AI buzzwords and showed what the lab actually makes. We put the models themselves on screen, Aurora, MatterSim, TamGen, and let them do the talking.

No voiceover meant design had to do everything, so we built a pixelated, mono-spaced type system that looks like the lab wrote it. From there it was all about the handoff from code to the real world, where a line of code becomes a working weather model or a brand-new molecule.

What came out is short and sharp, and it feels like it belongs to the lab and no one else. It talks straight to the people who’ll get it: the developers and researchers who know real work when they see it.
 

Images

 
The word NEW on the left and MATTER on the right flank a central image of a birch tree trunk breaking apart into digital pixel fragments, part of a Ranger & Fox brand film. Frame from Stash Magazine article.

The word MORE in bold, dark, capital letters centered over a swirling, gray and white particle pattern from a Ranger & Fox brand film. Frame from Stash Magazine article.

Concentric ripples move outward across a dark, liquid surface in this Ranger & Fox brand film, with illuminated numbers and symbols floating along the waves. Frame from Stash Magazine article.

The word DISCOVERED appears above a floating liquid blob with bubbles, and the word FASTER appears below it, in a Ranger & Fox brand film. Frame from Stash Magazine article.

A translucent, iridescent orb for a Microsoft Foundry Labs brand film, containing floating mathematical symbols and letters against a dark grid background. Frame from Stash Magazine article.
 

Credits

 
Client: Microsoft Foundry Labs

Production: Ranger & Fox
ECD: Stephen Panicara
EP: Jared Doud
Producer: Allyson Nevil
Designer: Brown Yoon, Ted Gore
2D Animator: Brown Yoon
3D Animator: Ted Gore

Music/Sound Design: Dave Hummel