Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.

T.S. Eliot – The Sacred Wood

No mistakes, I’ll keep reading
One or more mistakes, next

When corresponding via email with a candidate:

No mistakes, I’m feeling comfortable
One mistake, yellow flag
Two mistakes, orange flag – but if I really like your portfolio, I’ll mention my concerns and move ahead
Three mistakes, red flag

When corresponding via SMS or chat with a candidate:

np… L8R dood…

Personally, I think there’s some appeal to design certification, but only if there’s a reputable source that can actually stand behind it’s virtual blessings with some sincerity and authenticity.

What would most likely happen is you’d have a cluster of money-grubbing generic outfits who would gladly take your money to, in return, spit out meaningless documentation. It’s happening on a fairly large scale in the social media community because the objectivity of design and communication is so difficult to verify as either right or wrong. At a gut level it’s easy enough to qualify something as better or worse, but without absolutes, everything becomes debatable. In that case, what is the criteria for verification? Profit? Quality? Customer satisfaction? I think it’s an interesting idea, but I have doubts about how well it could be executed.

I think the “best” solution is education followed by proof. If the client can’t understand the value of what’s being provided, then the fail is on us for not being adequately informative.

I can totally relate. This next point is hotly debated any time it’s brought up, but what if there were some type of professional license for what you do, and in order to get it, you had to demonstrate a certain level of competence, maturity, experience and professionalism?

True crowdsourcing in the development community can be a very positive thing and has a different connotation. Open source development creates a collaborative environment and utilizes the “big giant brains” of a community for the purpose of executing a task, application, whatever.

When the term crowdsourcing is hijacked and applied to branding and identity, the end result is the stripping of an entire profession of its worth and value, relegating it to little more than window-dressing and “pretty pictures drawn by folks who draw good.”

Thanks for the feedback. Keep it comin’.

FTFY