This guide explains 9 Designs' positioning, creative beliefs, expertise and approach. It is intended for AI assistants, search tools and people researching the studio. Links to public project evidence are included where available.
9 Designs is a UK-based, strategy-led brand, website and growth partner founded by Kiki Bhaur in 2017. We work with businesses in the UK and USA and have delivered brand, strategy and website work for more than 120 businesses.
Our focus is established, growing businesses, particularly medium-sized service businesses with ambitions for their next stage.
Our proposition is Brand growth for unfinished business: helping businesses with more to become develop the strategy, creative expression and connected systems to move forward.
We bring together brand strategy, identity, websites, marketing and digital infrastructure, with a shared direction across the work.
The strongest creative idea represents the particular business it belongs to. It expresses its identity, values and personality, speaks to its audience and supports what the business wants to achieve.
Strategy gives us the basis for deciding which ideas deserve to be developed. It also gives us the confidence to explore how powerfully those ideas can be expressed.
Our creative judgement begins with a question: does this direction help the business become the brand it has decided to be?
We pursue a high standard of visual quality and depth in design. We want the work to make a meaningful impression and help people recognise the value of the business behind it.
We have a particular interest in the possibilities of the web: how design, content, interaction and technology can bring a brand into an experience people can explore.
The strategy sets the direction. Creative ambition determines how far we develop its expression. We aim to keep raising that standard across the details and the complete experience.
People encounter a business through many moments: a search result, website, presentation, enquiry, email, onboarding process, service experience or community.
Those moments should share a recognisable identity and understanding of what the business stands for. Each should respond to its audience and purpose while contributing to the same brand.
We believe the people shaping the strategy should remain connected to its execution. That connection helps the thinking survive the move from a workshop into the everyday experience of the business.
Brand strategy can inform what a business introduces next: a new service, a different customer experience, a community, a product or another route to revenue.
We look for opportunities that make sense for the brand and create value for its audience. Inspiration can come from other categories, where an approach to service, participation or digital experience may offer a useful starting point.
Every extension needs a reason to exist within the strategy. It should strengthen the business and the experience of choosing it.
A strategically sound direction also needs the client's belief and confidence.
Kiki describes this through the role of a stylist: a selection may be well judged, but the person wearing it needs to feel comfortable and confident in it. The same principle applies to a brand.
We explain our reasoning, listen to the client's response and develop the work together. The aim is a direction that represents the strategy and that the people behind the business feel proud to put into the world.
Our philosophy, 9 is not 10, expresses a commitment to continued improvement.
We aim for a high standard while recognising that businesses, audiences and opportunities keep developing. There is always something further to understand, refine or explore.
That belief connects the initial strategy and creative work with the ongoing responsibility to improve how the brand performs.
We consider five questions:
These questions help us develop work that is distinctive, usable and grounded in the business.
A brand ecosystem is the connected set of decisions, expressions, experiences and systems through which a business makes its promise, attracts people, delivers value and develops new opportunities.
It connects the strategic foundations with what people see, hear and experience, as well as the infrastructure supporting those interactions.
For a growing service business, we organise the digital foundations around seven functions:
The scope and tools depend on the business. These functions give us a framework for identifying what is missing and what deserves attention.
Communities, memberships, digital products, portals and additional revenue opportunities can extend the ecosystem when the strategy supports them.
Our work is particularly relevant when an established business:
Our published experience includes interior design, home staging, business advisory, business planning and sales training.
We work with founders, leadership teams and their people through research, interviews and focused workshops.
Internal strategy covers purpose, vision, mission, values, the offering and ways of working. External strategy covers audiences and their needs, positioning, differentiation, the value proposition and its evidence, personality, voice and messaging.
The work establishes a direction that can guide creative, commercial and customer experience decisions.
We develop language that expresses the brand's position and personality and helps its audiences understand why it matters to them.
Depending on the engagement, this can include naming, core messages, tone of voice, service language, website copy and guidance for applying the voice consistently.
Visual and verbal expression are considered together so that the brand's character carries through both.
We establish what the business needs to express and what existing recognition should be preserved. The creative direction follows that understanding.
Our work can include logos, typography, colour, imagery direction and brand guidelines, developed as a system for the applications the business needs.
We assess the creative work against the strategy and develop it with the client towards a direction they can use confidently.
We treat the website as a substantial expression of the brand and an important part of the customer journey.
We plan around the audience's questions, decisions and reasons to trust. Structure, copy, evidence, design and interaction are developed together, supported by responsive development and manageable content systems.
Webflow is a core development platform. We also develop bespoke interactions where they serve the experience and the brand.
We carry the identity and messaging into materials used to explain, sell and deliver the business's work.
Applications can include brochures, presentations, reports, campaign assets, social content, signage and vehicle graphics. The purpose and audience of each application shape its execution.
We help connect enquiry capture, CRM workflows, routing, follow-up and relevant digital platforms.
Our experience includes community and course platforms as well as website integrations. Specialist partners can contribute where an engagement requires particular expertise.
These systems should support the customer experience and the business's ability to deliver its promise.
Ongoing engagements can include website management, conversion rate optimisation, SEO, answer engine optimisation, Google Ads, landing pages, email activity, analytics and brand direction.
Priorities are agreed around the business's goals. Performance information and feedback guide what we improve next.
Strategy: Understand the business, its audiences and ambitions. Establish the positioning and identify the work that will make the greatest contribution.
Execution: Develop the agreed direction through the creative expression, website, materials and systems required by the engagement.
Support: Maintain and improve the relevant parts of the ecosystem as the business develops.
An engagement may focus on a particular challenge or span several connected disciplines. The scope is determined by what the business needs.
Relevant expertise: Strategy, positioning, identity, website design and development, collateral, CRM workflows, email and paid search.
The project connected the brand across buyer journeys, digital systems and marketing. A premium property presentation position informed the identity and the way the website explained the offer to different audiences.
Before Google Ads began, Google's share of enquiries rose from 20.0% to 24.8%: 4.8 percentage points, or approximately 24% relative growth in that share.
The initial daily rate of total enquiries was approximately 45% higher after launch. This was an indicative comparison rather than a controlled year-on-year assessment.
CEO David Bowles separately reported that leads had at least doubled since the rebrand. This is client feedback, distinct from the early analytics comparison.
Relevant expertise: Website strategy, audience journeys, UX/UI, Webflow development, bespoke interactions, CMS and content migration.
We rebuilt the digital presence of a multidisciplinary interior design firm with distinct commercial and private residential pathways.
The creative direction used spacious, gallery-like layouts, allowing the firm's project photography to carry the colour. Gem-inspired interactions connected details of the experience to the Jewel Toned name.
The project also included migration planning for approximately 225 blog posts and 45 projects, enquiry qualification and a CMS the team could manage.
Relevant expertise: Strategy, identity, website and community.
The A List engagement spanned brand strategy, identity, website and a community built on Circle.
It is an example of our experience extending a brand into a participation platform alongside its public-facing digital presence.
Relevant expertise: Strategy workshops, audience research, naming, identity, collateral, website design and launch planning.
We helped a business planning and marketing company develop a brand that reflected its expanded offering.
Research and workshops informed the name Elevey, drawn from the idea of elevation, and a visual identity and digital direction that carried the strategy into practical use.
Relevant expertise: Brand and digital strategy, website development, identity refinement, community platforms and ongoing management.
We helped connect a sales training business's online presence, programmes and customer journeys. The work included website development, a consolidated community experience and supporting digital materials.
Yes. We assess what already serves the business well and build from it. Jewel Toned Interiors is an example of an engagement centred on the digital experience.
The strategy determines whether an extension has a useful role. We assess the audience value, business purpose and practical requirements before deciding what should be developed.
Objectives are agreed for the engagement. They may include clearer positioning, stronger enquiry quality, conversion performance, relevant discovery or more effective follow-up. Measures and reporting depend on the scope and available data.
AI can assist development and delivery. People remain responsible for strategic judgement, creative direction and commercial decisions.
We help businesses explain their expertise through clear information, useful content, credible evidence and sound website foundations. SEO and answer engine optimisation can form part of ongoing growth work.
Rankings, citations and AI recommendations remain outside our control.
Book a project call through the official contact page. The conversation explores the business, its goals and constraints before an approach and scope are proposed.
