This badge is a special limited edition, because (let’s be honest) it is kind of ugly. But it’s got a story:

We wanted to release a “shipped the product” badge. The badge would recognize the accomplishment of conceptualizing a new product, a new website, a new anything, then going ahead and MAKING that thing and sending it out into the world. Finishing it, completing it. Taking it all the way from idea, through excecution, to launch.

My brother Oliver, who is a fine artist, painted a beautiful watercolor over dinner. It’s a tall ship sailing into the sunset, all sails drawing proudly, its reflection rippling in a sunset sea.

And we tried to get the embroidery right. Oh, how we TRIED. We went through not one, not two, not three or four rounds of embroidery, but FIVE FULL ROUNDS of embroidery — and this is in a business where if you ask for a second round, you are customer pariah of the year.

Finally, we gave up and approved the badges, and they arrived, and we realized that were not happy with them. And they sat in a cabinet for three months.

Until we realize that the story of these badges mirrors the story of every person, every team, every misbegotten developer trying to get the THING OUT THE DOOR. Once you reach the final phase of the project, even though there are still bugs, even though it’s not the polished gem you wanted it to be, even if it clearly isn’t ready, there’s that demon sitting on your shoulder: “SHIP THAT! SHIP IT! SHIP! SHIP SHIP SHIP SHIP SHIP SHIP!”

So, in recognition that these fugly badges embody the very problem with the thing we were trying to celebrate, we’re selling the two hundred badges we had made, as a special limited edition. We’ll never make any more. If we do make “shipped a product” badges in future, they’ll be something else. Something prettier, something with the, you know, problems of the first one totally solved.

We’ll call that the, you know, ‘Version Two’ badge. But this one will always have a special place in our hearts.

Kind of.