How To Contact Karl Pilkington

I started by searching for Karl on Twitter. The verified account that came up for him had one tweet, which read "I don't do twitter cos I think its daft but I do have a YouTube channel." After spending about 3 hours watching most of the videos on his YouTube channel, I came to the conclusion that Karl didn't write any comments on any of his videos, and so YouTube wouldn't be the way to contact him. Back on his Twitter account I noticed that he was only following one other Twitter account, which is very peculiar. I clicked on the one account he followed called "John Noel Management", which is rather unsurprisingly the celebrity management company that manages Karl as well as a few others such as Dermot O'Leary, Caroline Flack, George Lamb and Russell Brand. I clicked on Karls section of the site and found the E-mail address of Karl's agent and her assistant. These people are paid to listen to inquiries about Karl, and these would be the people I would e-mail or write to. That said, I wouldn't be one of their stereotypical "clients", and so I'd have to put forward a convincing case as to why Karl should answer my questions, but I reckon that would be manageable. 

Nobrow - Talk

Today we had a talk from one of the founders of Nobrow, a printing company that promotes the work of illustrators. The guy was talking about how he and the other co-founder didn't really know much about the industry but still managed to make a successful business, which has given me reassurance that I can succeed within the design industry.

More than this, they also said that they didn't know exactly what they wanted to do until just before setting up the company, which again, is re-assuring. I found this talk useful even though I have no professional interest in doing anything like they do.

They were handing out postcards showing examples of their work, I managed to get hold of a couple shown above.

Why I Am Here

Reasons I Chose This Course

• I wanted to learn about the rules of design, which is something that this course will allow me to do.
• I wanted to move away from home (Sheffield), but stay in Yorkshire hoping that the general lifestyle wouldn't be too different.
• I enjoyed my graphics A Level much more than my maths or physics, so why not carry on doing something you enjoy?
• It will give me a chance to improve my work substantially, as my development over A level was slow.
• LCA has a really good reputation, so it seemed like this was the place to be.

What I Want To Learn

• I want to become a lot better at screen printing, something I've only really done once.
• How to make my work look more professional, as it's clear from my work at the moment that I'm a student.
• Different production techniques so I can vary how I produce my work to stop myself becoming bored.
• How to go about producing an effective layout, because this is something I've never had any lessons on.
• Software skills to improve the variety of work I can produce.

Skills I Think Are My Strengths

• Patience. I'm willing to take my time over something to consider all the options.
• Logic. I think very logically which means that I tend no to make lots of mistakes.
• Language. I think that I can explain and justify my work quite well
• Time Management. I don't miss deadlines.
• Attitude. I don't quit things, if I'm not doing very well at something I'll try and improve to prove to myself that I can do it.

What I Want To Improve

• Confidence. I'm not very good at talking in front of a large group.
• Knowledge and ability of software, to make it easier for me to produce work.
• Idea of what I want to do in the future, as currently I'm clueless.
• Attitude. I want to be more open-minded.
• The quality of my work, as that's something that's only improving slowly at the moment.

How I Will Evaluate My Progress

• If I feel that my work is improving, I will see that as a success.
• If my presentations become better, it will prove that I'm becoming more confident.
• If I start automatically using shortcuts on software, or doing things I didn't previously know how to do, I will know that I'm becoming more competent with it.
• If my work throughout the year develops some sort of recurring theme, it could be an indication that I'm beginning to realise what I want to do.
• If my design context blog is full and has lots of good quality posts it will show I'm starting to think more open-mindedly as I'm looking at a wide variety of things.

Questions I Want To Find The Answer To

• Why is LCA's reputation so good?
• Why didn't I improve very much over A Level?
• Why is a degree necessary to be a successful designer?
• Should I have done a foundation year?
• Is washing and ironing as difficult or time consuming as my mum makes it out to be?

Things That Inspire Me

• Fear of failing. I don't want to fail.
• The want to be successful. I want to be successful.
• Competition. I want to be the best at everything I do.
• Other peoples doubts about me. As much as I tend not to worry about what other people think about me, it's great to prove people wrong when they doubt you.
• People. Some things that people have said that have gone down in history, particularly Einstein and Churchill, just make me want to do well at whatever I do.

Design That I'm Interested In/Intrigued By

Someone I Admire - Karl Pilkington

Honesty – Dishonesty is bad, clearly. It stops people from knowing you and from there it stops you from getting to know other people as well.
Humility – Despite being a fairly well-known TV personality, Karl is adamant he’s not a celebrity. Not getting ahead of yourself and keeping your feet on the ground is very important.
Humour – Being able to make people laugh helps people get along, but what I admire about Karl’s sense of humour is how he doesn’t think he’s being funny, he just talks, says things how they are, and it’s funny.
Literacy – It’s important to be able to express how you feel, and a lot of people, men in particular, seem to either not want to talk about how they feel about things or be able to verbally express it, this is something Karl Doesn’t have trouble with.
Thick-Skinnedness – Being able to shrug off criticism and not take abuse to heart is important, and Karl puts up the abuse of Ricky Gervais purely for peoples entertainment, which I don’t think many people could do.

I chose Karl Pilkington because recently I’ve been compared to him by a flatmate and it’s made me think about what he actually does and why he’s so popular amongst the viewers of the shows that he’s on. Personally I admire Karl for his sense of humour and his way with words, but what people tend not to consider is that I think he thinks he’s just doing his job.

In all honesty I can’t imagine it being too hard to get in contact with him because I imagine that Ricky Gervais would find it quite funny that someone admired Karl Pilkington, and with social networking being such a massive communicating power, I imagine I could get in touch with Ricky Gervais over twitter.

I would want to know if he is genuinely happy with his closed-mindedness being paraded on national television, because I fail to believe that he’s happy that people laugh at his thoughts. I would also want to know if he would’ve changed in hindsight and been more open-minded, as I’m often accused of being closed minded myself, and something that seems very important to graphic design is being able to think “outside the box”, and I’m worried that my current state of mind won’t accommodate for this over the next three years and beyond. I would like to know from Karl if he thinks himself capable of thinking “outside the box”, because if he can do it then anyone can.