Maryland Architect seal requirements: size, wording, and the rule that sets them

No. The word on the seal is "Architect", by itself. The State Board of Architects publishes the requirement as a seal consisting of the pictorial device of the Great Seal of Maryland as a center, surrounded by the words "State of Maryland" and "Architect" and the licensee's name and license number. Maryland licenses architects rather than registering them — the statute speaks of the licensed architect who prepared or approved the document — so neither "Registered Architect" nor "Licensed Architect" is the published legend. (Board seal guidance, labor.maryland.gov/license/arch/archseal.shtml; Md. Code, Bus. Occ. & Prof. § 3-501(a))

Yes, and it is the element most often missing from artwork sold for Maryland. The Board of Architects' Seal and Title Block Rules page requires the pictorial device of the Great Seal of Maryland at the center, surrounded by "State of Maryland" and "Architect" and the licensee's name and license number, and accepts an impression seal, a rubber stamp facsimile or a digital seal. Note where that language lives: COMAR 09.21.02.03, the regulation the Board's page points to and the section usually cited for the architect seal, is titled Sealing Requirements and covers competence, approval, signatures and digital signatures — it contains no seal-design language at all. (Board seal guidance, labor.maryland.gov/license/arch/archseal.shtml; COMAR 09.21.02.03)

No. Neither COMAR nor the Board of Architects' seal page states a diameter for the architect seal; the page prescribes the contents, names the acceptable forms, and stops. The 1-5/8 inch to 2 inch range quoted for Maryland is the State Board for Professional Engineers' own seal guidance for the engineer's seal — "not smaller than the commercially designated 1-5/8 inches and not larger than the commercially designated 2 inches" — and the architects' board has published nothing equivalent. (Board seal guidance, labor.maryland.gov/license/arch/archseal.shtml; State Board for Professional Engineers seal guidance)

Send it in view-only form. COMAR 09.21.02.03.F states that once the digital signature is applied to the document, the document shall be available in a View Format only if the document is to be transmitted electronically. That condition is peculiar to architects — the engineers' parallel regulation, COMAR 09.23.03.09, sets out digital-signature criteria but imposes no view-format restriction. The architect's digital signature must also contain identification unique to the licensee, be under the licensee's exclusive control, be verifiable, and be linked to the document so that any later modification means the document is no longer considered prepared or approved by the licensee. (COMAR 09.21.02.03.E and .F; COMAR 09.23.03.09)

A principal's, unless the firm designates someone else in writing. COMAR 09.21.02.04.C requires the entity's name in the titleblock and then requires the titleblock to contain a date, printed name, signature and seal of one of the directors of a corporation, general partners of a partnership, or members of a limited liability company who prepared or approved the documents. Paragraph .D lets those principals designate another employee of the entity to sign and seal instead, provided the designee is licensed in Maryland and prepared or approved the documents for that particular project. The engineers' titleblock rule asks only for the printed name of the engineering entity, so a firm that carries its engineering practice over to its architectural drawings will be short an element. (COMAR 09.21.02.04.C and .D; COMAR 09.23.03.10.B)