Final days of the Píccolo Field Trip: Jen Mussari and Nick Iluzada

I’m gonna wrap up the Píc­co­lo Field Trip today with a cou­ple of stu­dios that Lisa and I vis­it­ed over the last two days of our trip. Again, we were in Brook­lyn and saw the spaces of Jen Mus­sari and Nick Iluza­da, who work in Stu­dio­mates and the Pen­cil Fac­to­ry, respec­tive­ly. Both were wel­com­ing and showed us around. The two com­mu­nal spaces were very dif­fer­ent, with Jen’s desk and Stu­dio­mates being tidy with mod­ern decor. Nick­’s stu­dio in the Pen­cil Fac­to­ry, by con­trast, was full of stuff. Not only his art­work, but a prized paper cut­ter and riso­graph (jeal­ous!).

Jen is an illus­tra­tor and let­ter­er, and her desk shows devel­op­ment and sketch­ing for mul­ti­ple let­ter­ing projects. She draws her type by hand, and is cur­rent­ly per­fect­ing a brush script let­ter­ing as well as cop­per­plate script cal­lig­ra­phy. A major­i­ty of her cur­rent free­lance work is for let­ter­ing, which she’s very hap­py about. With­in the last 6 — 9 months, Jen stopped accept­ing client work that was­n’t true to her style, which is great! That is often eas­i­er said than done. It’s a good feel­ing for her that peo­ple are seek­ing her out because they like what she’s doing and want her unique voice for their project.

Here’s some of her beau­ti­ful let­ter­ing. (Via her web­site.)

Jen also is swiss­mis­stant to swiss­miss her­self, Tina Roth Eisen­berg. Jen helps her with Tat­tly, designy tem­po­rary tat­toos, as well as Tina’s oth­er endeav­ors, includ­ing help man­age the Stu­dio­mates space. Jen was kind enough to take us around to not only her stu­dio, but let us see adja­cent spaces, includ­ing Tattly.

Nick Iluzada’s space is in the Pen­cil Fac­to­ry. Still in Brook­lyn,  but in the neigh­bor­hood of Green­point. He shares his space with oth­er illus­tra­tors and is down the hall from many more. I could get lost look­ing at all that he has around — pro­mos, zines, in progress draw­ings, a bike, and more.

Nick works dig­i­tal­ly (he has a Cin­tiq that he often works on), and also draws off screen. In addi­tion to the com­mer­cial illus­tra­tion, he also col­lab­o­rates on zines and is inter­est­ed in small­er-scale illus­tra­tion endeavors.

Here’s some of Nick­’s col­or­ful and live­ly illus­tra­tions. All images via his web­site.