Meet Rick Daniel of Creative Test Lab

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rick Daniel.

Hi Rick, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Hey, I’m Rick Daniel, the owner and chief creative scientist at Creative Test Lab in Atlanta. I was born and raised just down the road in Athens, GA.

My passion for creativity and making things has been with me since I was a kid. My dad was my first example of having the drive to be creative. He was a camera buff who loved taking photos of people and events—often for free. He was good at building stuff and made different types of wooden puzzles and toys. He also worked at Westinghouse Electric Company, and he’d bring home all these cool corporate-branded materials: pencils, notepads, work jackets, brochures, annual reports. I was transfixed by how all these items shared a unified visual language through their logos, colors, and fonts. I later learned this identity system was designed by the great Paul Rand, and it had a profound influence on my decision to become a graphic designer. Further inspiration came from growing up in a college town, combined with the energy of ’70s and ’80s Pop Culture and Hip-Hop.

I graduated from the Atlanta College of Art (now SCAD-Atlanta) in the early ’90s with a concentration in Graphic Design. Over the last 30 years, I’ve worked across various disciplines, including design marketing at large national companies, product and packaging design for a toy manufacturer, environmental design at an architectural firm, and corporate branding for an international tech company. My ultimate love is crafting logos, visual identities, and brand systems—there’s nothing like helping a client discover their company’s voice and visual personality to create a unique mark that can stand tall in the marketplace.

I founded Creative Test Lab because I reached a point where I felt I owed it to myself to express my own design ideas as products and art for public consumption. I wanted to build a business that is community-involved, engaging, and innovative.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, it definitely has not been a smooth road at all!

I think my biggest challenges are self-doubt and perfectionism. The self-doubt isn’t about my creative abilities—I have a long design career to back up my skills—it’s about taking myself more seriously as a business owner. I manage this feeling by reminding myself of my career blessings and business accomplishments, not focusing on what I haven’t done or wishing the company was further along.

“Progress, not perfectionism.” I deal with perfectionism less often now, mainly because it creates anxiety and I have enough on my plate. Sometimes you just have to start and work it out as you go along, focusing on the horizon and the bigger picture instead of getting caught up in the weeds of details. What truly pushes me through any challenge is the simple fact that if I don’t produce my design and art, who will? How will the world/universe get a chance to interact with it?

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Creative Test Lab (CTL) is a product design studio that specializes in creating unique, sustainable products for consumers and offering full-service design solutions for small and medium-sized businesses.

We essentially operate on two sides. On one side, we design, make, and bring to market our own eco-friendly consumer products, which can include anything from home furniture and Bluetooth speakers to toys and dog beds. The other side of the company offers our product design skill set, along with other design-to-market services like design strategy, logo/identity creation, branding, and packaging, to other businesses that need help getting their own product or service to market.

Some of our successful client projects include the logo and identity system for the Major League Baseball team Columbia Fireflies, as well as the branding system for the award-winning barbershop Fadeologist and the independent drink company Squeeze King in Tucker, GA.

CTL’s vision is to turn design ideas into tangible products and art that inspire, engage, and educate, while simultaneously empowering small to medium-sized businesses with strategic design. Our clients receive professional, agency-level creative that allows us to push the envelope with innovative work, which often lines up successfully against the more conservative creative of larger companies. The business is guided by core values like hard work, design integrity, kindness, respect, and common sense.

The name Creative Test Lab came from the idea of a space—anywhere—that fosters inspiration, intentional play, craftsmanship, and smart design; it’s a playful way to say ‘design studio’ without using the word “design.” We are currently working on a furniture project, the Grass-hop stool, which started as a pandemic project and will soon go into production.

CTL also has two sub-brands:

Robert Lee Images is a passion project and social media brand featuring my dad’s photography. His images, spanning from his late teens into his seventies, often depict the joy, fun, and resilience of Black folks in Athens, GA, during the pre- through post-Civil Rights era.

Athens Native Brand is an outdoor leisure lifestyle brand currently undergoing restructuring, focused on celebrating Athens locals and history, not oriented so much around the University of Georgia.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.creativetestlab.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ctestlab/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rick-daniel-4a2a3559/
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/robertleeimages/