2022 at Reasonable Company

Reasonable Company was formed in January of 2022. At the end of each calendar year, I will take time to revisit the company’s goals, reflect on its successes and failures, and define my expectations for the next 12 months.

Defining Reasonable Company

First, each year, I want to revisit the company’s purpose and definition. In 2022, I wrote: Reasonable Company is the values-led design and creative practice of Matthew Howell.

Ok. This is still both aspirational and accurate, so onward to the next year.

Goals from 2022

I wrote down eight goals for 2022, completing five, detailed below.

1. Create the company

Complete. Reasonable Company LLC was formed in January.

  • The company is in good standing and financially viable for 2023.
  • The company acquired everything that it needs at the moment (bank account, credit, payment processing, domain name, email, hosting, etc).
  • The company brand and logo marks were designed and finished.

2. Launch the company website

Complete. reasonable.work was launched in February. It’s a small static website, generated by Zola, and hosted on Netlify.

  • shop.reasonable.work was launched using Big Cartel to sell art prints
  • A Ko-fi page was set up to explore sponsorship and other revenue
  • Plausible Analytics was used for while, but ultimately abandoned for lack of need

3. Release one open-source project

Complete. Reasonable Colors, an open-source color system for building accessible, nice-looking color palettes, was released in April. However modest, this was the most successful and prominent open-source project that I’ve ever built.

The code is available on GitHub and GitLab.

4. Find one open-source project sponsor

No.

This didn’t happen and after some initial thought, I decided against pursuing it. Until I have more time to dedicate to maintenance and can feel confident about responding to issues and pull requests, I don’t think sponsorship makes sense.

5. Release one piece of art

Complete. 1024 Lemons was released in May.

6. Sell one art print

Complete. As of today, Reasonable Company has sold 3, physical 1024 Lemons art prints to customers (and one digital lemon, which was generously purchased by my partner).

I will mark this as the company’s biggest success to date. Not to overstate the situation, but selling a piece of art is the fulfillment of a long-held creative dream.

7. Release one video game

No.

But, also, kind of. I did not release a video game this year. I did finish a small video game, but it was a gift and not released publicly or sold.

8. Sell one video game copy

No.

No game released, so no game to sell.

Goals for 2023

In 2023, Reasonable Company hopes to continue making things and slowly growing itself into a machine capable of making more things.

  1. Release five pieces of art
  2. Sell five art prints
  3. Release two open-source projects
  4. Release one video game
  5. Sell one video game copy
  6. Release one video game soundtrack
  7. Sell one video game soundtrack copy
  8. Release one book