Why We Started Brainstormers

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. Not 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 templated 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.