Space Vacation’s Beautiful Prints Celebrate Fan Favorite Films

I first fell in love with Samar Haddad’s playful yet sophisticated caricatures on Instagram, where she posts pop culture poster art of her favorite shows and movies under the name Space Vacation. Her exemplary cartooning skills allow her to skillfully draw a distinct face with just a few lines, creating an instantly recognizable trademark. Her drawings are funny and strange; Their color palettes are enviable.

You will see her illustrations everywhere The edge – most often accompanying our instructions and sometimes also with The Vergecast. I chatted with her about drawing people without noses, where she finds inspiration, and how she makes time for art as a parent.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How did you get started making pop culture prints?

I worked in design and branding agencies for a few years and was stuck in a situation where I was always dictated by the client’s wishes and never really had a say in how the projects ended. Then a friend of mine was working with a television production company and they were looking for a collective of designers to create posters in any medium they wanted. I chose to illustrate several iconic film characters and combine them into one composition. This was the most fun I’ve ever had on a project and I loved the freedom I had.

Since it was films and series that got me excited about illustrating, I continued game of Thrones, the first illustrated poster I made for myself, and as I continued to create more posters based on films and series I love, I launched the Space Vacation brand in 2016 with my first exhibition to present prints. It’s been an exciting journey since then.

What was it about films that made you want to become an illustrator? Are there any specific films or shows?

I have always been more attracted to fiction and fantasy than reality. Being close to films and series felt like I was immersing myself in my own world. So it was natural to pay tribute to some of my favorite films or series and I started designing posters with my own interpretation of them. I started with the films that had the most influence on me as a teenager extraterrestrial, The Breakfast Club, war of stars… I feel really lucky to have grown up in such an exciting time for cinema.

How do you start a new project? Explain to us the process of creating a composition.

The process is the same for every project. I’m trying to capture an idea or inspiration from what I’ve seen recently. It could be a line from a movie or a scene that really stuck with me. I write it down and then come back to it (usually at night when everything has calmed down and I can concentrate without interruption). I develop this idea further by creating several vector elements such as the main characters and setting and sometimes incorporating them into the font. I go through many color schemes and composition variations until I’m happy with my progress. And I always work digitally. I feel like it gives me flexibility if I want to start from scratch or change elements to recreate it differently.

So you create individual elements and then put them together to form a composition?

Yes, I treat it like a collage. When I was in college, I loved making art collages as a hobby and I thought, why not apply that to illustrations too? The process requires a lot of trial and error, but in the end I find it very rewarding.

The faces you draw are so distinctive – you use very few lines to immediately convey a recognizable persona. How did you find this style?

When I started drawing faces I decided to go for a really geometric style. I experimented with making characters recognizable through other distinctive aspects, such as a piece of clothing unique to them. But I found that this approach made the characters seem stiff and often somewhat similar. So I started to loosen up my style a bit by making the lines curvier. I made the positioning and size of the facial elements more proportional to the actual character I was drawing. I guess it was this mix that made the faces more recognizable.

I have to ask: Why don’t you draw noses on your characters? I love this detail and the fact that people are so easily recognizable even without it. Was that a conscious decision?

Yes, it was. I took inspiration from anime characters and felt it allowed me to focus more on the eyes and mouth, which convey a wider range of emotions and expressions. The nose, a crucial and sophisticated feature, was left undefined to preserve the essence of the subject and capture a deeper character that goes beyond mere physicality.

Do you approach editorial art and commissioned projects differently than the pop culture prints you make?

I treat self-initiated prints the same way I would treat commissioned projects. If I treated them differently, I would become too comfortable and they would become secondary. I don’t want the result not to be as good as I would have liked, because at the end of the day they are just as important and personal as my other works.

Do you still have time to draw “just for fun”?

Since I have a daughter things have definitely become a lot more demanding and I spend most of my time with her. In my life before toddlerhood, work was always more important. Things have changed drastically now because I want to be there every moment, especially in the first few years. But I make sure I take time for myself and creative play to further ignite the spark and refresh my inspiration.