After years of industry experience and academic positions lecturing to students about creativity and branding, Joris van Dooren and Coen Luijten both began to notice some strange behaviour. Both their student and the starting entrepreneurs they were working for in their Building Better Brands course, had started to act irrationally when it came to their brands, putting in all their financial resources, discussing them non-stop, and staying up late into the night to work on them.

It almost looked a little like parenthood.

Newborn brands are just like babies to us. With the right guidance, we can raise them into something spectacular. That said, when things go wrong, we can just as easily f*ck them up.

Within these pages, we trace the development of your brand from its baby stages right up to adulthood. Just like how it takes 18 years to raise a child, we've broken down the process into 18 steps. With interactive examples and tasks to help bring your brand to life, you'll be able to watch your brand grow as you move from step to step.

It takes a village to raise a child and you'll need to juggle different tasks when starting up. But, when it comes to branding and creativity, we'll be your support system. After helping launch over 75 startups, we've refined the process to perfection. Let's start creating your brand, it will be big fun!

By the end of these 18 steps, your brand will have a personality, a style, a story - it'll be a fully formed brand. But, before we arrive there, we have to take care of our baby brand.

Are you ready for parenthood? It's one hell of a ride. Let's try not to f*ck it up.