Not To Scale create campaign for Latinx and Hispanic Heritage Month on Facebook

Production company Not To Scale was approached by Facebook to create a socially native program that will celebrate the strength and resilience of the Latinx Community during Latinx and Hispanic Heritage Month and beyond.

Not To Scale director Kris Merc was the perfect answer to the brief – a Puerto Rican living in Spanish Harlem with a mixed media style that exactly compliments the richness and diversity of the Latinx community. Kris’s work deals a lot with Latinx identity and his life mission has been to bring depth to the community’s stories and humanise them, showing all the layers and complexities there are to the culture.

In the Latin community your gente (people) come first whether that’s your friends, family or football club. Latin culture is all about the strength and joy you get from the people you love, and this was central to the films.

‘I’m so passionate about my heritage. This is about love. I wanted it to feel like a conversation happening with the audience, to explore how to highlight these words in as many different visual languages that find their roots in our culture. They should feel organic, real, authentic, and speak volumes about who we are, where we come from.’ - Kris Merc

We worked with 3 acclaimed Hispanic and Latinx spoken word poets – Angelica, Carlos and Mela who collaborated with Facebook Groups to create original poems that celebrate the power and resilience of their people, uplift their community and honour their heritage. We shot the live action, remotely in Dominican Republic, Mexico (MX City) and Atlanta.

A myriad of styles were used to convey the spirit and heart of the Latinx community. Live action portraits were combined with type and illustration to push the narrative forward in a powerful way and also to accentuate important elements of the poetry. Stitching is a big part of the Latinx culture and was used over photography to accentuate flowers, clothing and also in type. 2D portraits create impactful, magical and surreal moments and are interspersed with mixed media collage transitioning in cool ways.