Introduction
Monika Nessbach, Principal and Chief Creative Officer at Designbar, joins Jack Ossa on The Power of Design Podcast to tell the story of how a German exchange student who studied business and worked in the corporate world ended up running an interior design studio in Charlotte. She talks about hospitality design, workplaces that feel like home and the business lessons of running a small firm.
The conversation is recorded in Jack's office and covers her path, her work on restaurants, bars, offices, multifamily, schools and retail spaces, and her view that good design connects a space, a brand and an emotion.
About the Episode
Monika grew up in Germany and spent a year of high school in Salisbury, North Carolina, which she remembers as a culture shock. She studied business administration, worked as a flight attendant for Lufthansa, and returned to Charlotte for an MBA, where an internship with a German company led to a corporate career. After about six years she felt something creative was missing, remodeled her own house, loved the process and began taking interior design classes every evening at CPCC.
She started Designbar in 2009, after being invited to design a room at a designer showhouse, and began working full time as a designer around 2013. She had never worked for a design firm and describes the learning curve, from codes and construction documents to talking with the trades, as exponential. Her first commercial interiors came from the corporate employer she had left behind, whose executives had seen her showhouse room.
Jack and Monika then talk about how workplaces have changed, from cubicles to spaces that look like hotel lobbies, and about why a well-designed restaurant has to be planned as a complete experience. They finish with the lessons of owning a small business and how both of them learned to separate themselves from the company so that it can scale.
Key Takeaways
- Confidence is a daily practice: Monika still faces impostor syndrome and says growth comes from getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.
- Design starts before the door: a restaurant experience includes the reservation, the greeting and the exit, and all of them must tell the same story.
- Start from the food: she asks for the menu and wants to meet the chef, since the senses engaged by the food shape the space.
- Workplaces should feel like home: people spend much of their lives at work, so comfortable, human spaces help them want to stay.
- Diversify: relying on one big project, even one a small team can deliver, puts a small company at risk.
- One-stop delivery makes sense: a design-build approach gives clients one point of contact and one budget instead of several.
- Separate yourself from the business: a firm that depends on its founder's own hands cannot scale, and seeing good work produced without you is a sign it can.
Highlights from the Conversation
A well-designed restaurant is a restaurant where the experience starts before you even enter the restaurant.
Monika Nessbach
That wow feeling is the connection. That's what you want. You want people to connect to the brand.
Monika Nessbach
Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is what I needed to get over.
Monika Nessbach
Topics Discussed
- From Germany to Charlotte and from business to design
- Starting a design studio without working for a firm first
- Commercial interiors and vendor relationships
- Hospitality, restaurants and the full guest experience
- How workplace design has changed since the 1990s
- Combining old and new design styles
- Diversification and design-build for small firms
- Scaling a business beyond its founder
Why This Conversation Matters
Monika's view that a space is an experience, and that the brand, the menu and the interior have to tell one story, is at the center of our own work. It is relevant to anyone planning a restaurant, a club or an office. Our interior architecture and branding teams work on that connection, for example at Bentley's Restaurant and The Club at Longview.
About the Guest
Monika Nessbach is Principal and Chief Creative Officer of Designbar, an interior design studio in Charlotte, North Carolina, that she founded in 2009. Born and raised in Germany, she studied business administration, worked as a flight attendant and in the corporate world, and trained in interior design at CPCC. Her work includes restaurants, bars, offices, multifamily, schools and retail spaces, with a growing focus on hospitality. Find her on LinkedIn and at designbaronline.com.
