Why We Started Brainstormers
Agency · 2026
By Kevin Stormer, Founder & Creative Director
We didn't start Brainstormers to be another shop that delivers "good enough." We started it because the digital middle ground is dead, and the only way forward is monumental. I kept seeing the same pattern: brands with real ambition, being handed mediocre work by agencies with mediocre communication. The product suffered. The client relationship suffered. And nobody seemed bothered enough to fix it.
Before founding Brainstormers, I spent time in freelance work and studied IT, which meant I saw both sides of the problem. The technical side, where engineers built things that didn't look right. And the creative side, where designers delivered things that didn't work right. The gap between the two was where most projects fell apart.
The communication problem nobody talks about
Ask any business owner what their worst agency experience was, and nine times out of ten the answer isn't "the design was bad." It's "I had no idea what was happening," or "they disappeared for three weeks and came back with something completely wrong."
Bad communication doesn't just feel unpleasant, it's expensive. Revisions multiply. Deadlines slip. Briefs get misinterpreted and rebuilt from scratch. The client loses confidence. The agency loses the client. Everyone loses time and money on something that could have been avoided with a single honest conversation at the right moment.
At Brainstormers, communication is not an afterthought, it's part of the service. You'll always know what stage your project is at. You'll always get a straight answer. And if something isn't working, we'll tell you before you have to ask.
The template problem
The second thing I wanted to solve was the reflex towards templates. Not Squarespace templates, I mean the mental templates: the formulaic way many agencies approach a brief. Same structure, same colour logic, same type hierarchy. Swap out the logo and you've got a different client. Same site.
Every project at Brainstormers starts from a blank slate. That doesn't mean we ignore best practice, it means we start with your specific problem, your specific audience, and your specific brand. The solution follows from that rather than the other way around.
This is why strategy always comes before aesthetics in everything we do, a principle we've written about in detail in our piece on brand identity for ambitious companies.
Why the Netherlands
The Netherlands has a design tradition worth respecting. Dutch design is characterised by directness, structure, and a refusal to over decorate. That sensibility is baked into the way we work, we don't add complexity for the sake of it. We remove everything that doesn't earn its place.
We work with brands worldwide, but the Dutch work ethic and the Dutch design approach is in our DNA. Brainstormers is built on the belief that great work doesn't need to shout, it needs to be undeniable.
Where we're going
Brainstormers launched in 2026. We're early, and that's deliberate. Staying small means we can give every client the full attention they deserve, not a junior account manager and a generic onboarding deck. Direct access to the people doing the work. Real creative investment in every project.
That won't scale forever. But right now, it's exactly the kind of agency we wanted to build, and exactly the kind that most brands actually need.
From website development and brand identity to SEO, business automation, and AI implementation, every service we offer is built around the same founding principle: do exceptional work and communicate clearly throughout.
Small by design, not by accident
We're often asked when we'll scale. The honest answer is: not soon, and not blindly. Staying deliberately small is what lets a founder talk directly to a founder, and what keeps a brief from getting lost in translation across five layers of account management. The day we grow, we'll grow the way we build, slowly, intentionally, and only when it makes the work better rather than simply cheaper to produce.
There's a quiet myth in the agency world that bigger means safer. In our experience it usually means slower, more political, and further from the actual craft. We would rather be the studio a client trusts with the things that matter than the vendor they tolerate for the things that don't.
What 'monumental' actually means
Monumental isn't about spectacle. A monument is something built to last, something that still makes sense decades after it went up. That is the standard we hold our work to: not the trend of the season, but a foundation a brand can stand on for years. It's why we obsess over structure before surface, and why we'd rather ship something quietly excellent than loudly average.
In practice that means a website that still performs after the launch buzz fades, a brand system that holds together as the company grows, and automations that keep paying back long after they were built. We measure impact in years, not weeks.
Building in the open
Trust isn't a tagline; it's a practice. We try to earn it by being legible, sharing our thinking, showing work in progress, and being honest when something needs more time. Clients don't need to be protected from the process. They need to be part of it.
That openness changes the work itself. When a client understands why a decision was made, they can push on it, improve it, or sign off with real confidence. The result is fewer surprises, faster decisions, and a final product everyone actually believes in.
The kind of client we're built for
We're not for everyone, and that's deliberate. Brainstormers is built for founders and teams who take their brand seriously enough to invest in getting it right, people who want a partner with an opinion, not a pair of hands that says yes to everything.
If you're after the cheapest possible version of the work, we're probably not your studio. But if you want something considered, durable, and genuinely your own, that's exactly the conversation we want to have.
Small by design, not by accident
We're often asked when we'll scale. The honest answer is: not soon, and not blindly. Staying deliberately small is what lets a founder talk directly to a founder, and what keeps a brief from getting lost in translation across five layers of account management. The day we grow, we'll grow the way we build, slowly, intentionally, and only when it makes the work better rather than simply cheaper to produce.
There's a quiet myth in the agency world that bigger means safer. In our experience it usually means slower, more political, and further from the actual craft. We would rather be the studio a client trusts with the things that matter than the vendor they tolerate for the things that don't.
What 'monumental' actually means
Monumental isn't about spectacle. A monument is something built to last, something that still makes sense decades after it went up. That is the standard we hold our work to: not the trend of the season, but a foundation a brand can stand on for years. It's why we obsess over structure before surface, and why we'd rather ship something quietly excellent than loudly average.
In practice that means a website that still performs after the launch buzz fades, a brand system that holds together as the company grows, and automations that keep paying back long after they were built. We measure impact in years, not weeks.
Building in the open
Trust isn't a tagline; it's a practice. We try to earn it by being legible, sharing our thinking, showing work in progress, and being honest when something needs more time. Clients don't need to be protected from the process. They need to be part of it.
That openness changes the work itself. When a client understands why a decision was made, they can push on it, improve it, or sign off with real confidence. The result is fewer surprises, faster decisions, and a final product everyone actually believes in.
The kind of client we're built for
We're not for everyone, and that's deliberate. Brainstormers is built for founders and teams who take their brand seriously enough to invest in getting it right, people who want a partner with an opinion, not a pair of hands that says yes to everything.
If you're after the cheapest possible version of the work, we're probably not your studio. But if you want something considered, durable, and genuinely your own, that's exactly the conversation we want to have.