Of Cabbages and Kings

John D. Rockefeller founded the University of Chicago along with the American Baptist Education Society. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.”  John D. Rockefeller

In his day, thought to be one of the richest men in the world, and by everyone’s standards an admirable success, John Rockefeller spoke a wisdom that has become more relevant today than ever.  Rockefeller started his immeasurable empire by selling cabbages to the Union Army, when vegetables for the troops were scarce.  Seeing the need, he borrowed a wagon and went to a farm in the New York countryside, where he purchased cabbages for three cents a piece.  He drove directly to a nearby Union Army camp and sold them the cabbages for $.25 each.  The army was thrilled to have a need met that they couldn’t meet themselves, the farmer was thrilled to be unloading his surplus crop of cabbage, and the enterprising young Rockefeller was on his way to making more money than anyone up to that point had imagined possible.  Driving a wagon load of cabbages into an army camp was thought by many to be an audacious move.  Audacious and brilliant are often interchangeable concepts.

Picture This

You are looking for quality, distinctive photography for your website, your custom labeling, your press releases, your social media sites.  Basically, you want to promote your company in a way that says, “we are successful, we care about our customers, we invest in what matters”.  It’s a lot to ask of a photograph, but it should still be asked.  A commercial photographer, one with a vision for marketing your company will succeed in capturing what you do in a way that will give you marketing results in a single click.  We speak to the world through the internet, so our visual effects mean more now than they ever have before and Eric Lars Bakke is at the top of the game.  He is better at seeing who you really are than you are, and he will give the edge you are looking for in a competitive world of commerce.

By its Cover

Bottles of wine with labels (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If most of us are going to be honest, when we walk into a liquor store in pursuit of a wine to serve to special dinner guests, the wine we take home will most often be chosen based on the label on the bottle.  When our knowledge of wines, and vineyards and grapes and aging is limited, and we are standing in the wine sea trying to make up our minds, we inevitably go for the bottle that sports an appealing label.  In reality, the label on a product has much to do with how we choose many of the items we purchase, and even more so with wine.  The logic tends to be that if a wine producer has the good sense to put a decent label ON their bottle there is a good chance they will put a decent wine IN their bottle.  If your wine is everything you think it is, and certainly it is, your label needs to convince the buying public of the fact.  You have one chance to sell to the person who has never heard of your product.  Your label matters.

On the Outside

Turning your product from a bottled, canned, bagged or boxed anonymity into a national icon takes more than the best intended well wishes.   It requires product marking, a well designed, professionally crafted, perfectly applied identification that will implant the name of your genius commodity in the psyche of the consumer.  You’re in luck – regardless of your product requirements.  Whether you are looking for a shrink sleeve, a pressure sensitive application, extended content labels, decals, or a cut and stack you will find that Buckley Graphics has your answer.  We are about so much more than product marking; we are product marketers, promoters of goods, your partner in your rise to the top.

Dead Heat

The first triple dead heat in harness racing: Patchover (Ed Myer), Payne Hall (F. Albertson) and Penny Maid (E. Beede) in a Freehold Raceway (USA) race. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On October 3, 1953 the first Triple Dead Heat in a Harness Race was photographically recorded at Freehold Raceway in New Jersey.  The three horses who were crossing the finish line at virtually the same time were Patchover, Payne Hall and Penny Maid and their three way photo finish was a first.  Photography was relied on heavily in “too close to judge” races regardless of the race vehicle.  Determining a winner through the use of high speed, 10,000 frames per second, photography is still widely used today and thought to be the most reliable means of proving what the naked eye is unable to perceive.  Proving a photo can certainly make the impossible believable the race at Freehold declared that the horses did indeed cross the finish line at exactly the same time making their race end in a dead heat, all of them declared winners.  Photography was there to record this bigger than life, and this never happened before event, and as always giving us the most accurate and often most interesting record of history available, turning the unimaginable into the new reality.  Professional photography on your website will give you the edge of truth you are looking for in a way that removes all question of how great you are at what you do!

Behold the Dog

If you’ve ever watched a dog nap you know that they are much better at it than we are.  They pick their spot, without concern for who might be coming through, clearly assuming it is their right to nap, wherever and whenever they want to.  They are not concerned with what time of day it is or even if they will be going to bed in two hours; if they’re sleepy they find a comfortable place that is generally warm, but not over heated, and grab a few winks.  They are unencumbered by worries about the volume of their snoring, or what they look like when they drool, because they are there to enjoy uninterrupted rest.  If in the midst of their snooze if they suddenly become aware of a bunny in the yard or a mailman at the gate they are more than willing to abandon their moment of repose and dart, fully awake toward the object of their concern.  So in general the rules seem to be – 1)nap when you’re sleepy, 2)abandon all sense of decorum for a really good snooze, and  3)a nap is not a commitment, but rather a stopover in an otherwise demanding life.

Beholder

Being there for the truly important pictures of life is part of what defines a good photographer.  What qualifies as important depends in great depths on the viewer.  One still image will take one person’s breath away without even grabbing the attention of the next ten people in line.  It is on rare occasions that a single moment captured by camera will draw all who encounter its surface, a whole generation, and entire nation, the world.  When the photography on your website is seen by the surfing public does it have enough buried in its fleeting appeal to make ten people stop and take note, or even one person?  If your website is to be of any value to your business, it must capture the fancy of one individual at the very least, the hope being that they will then guide others to the site, simply for the impression it made on them.  The photography of Eric Lars Bakke is the phenomenon that your website is waiting for.  Stunning in its impact – important in its results.

Spring Forward

Despite what the last few days have told us, spring is here and we think it’s worth celebrating.  These are the days when inspired ideas bloom into prosperous enterprises, so dive in and get that product off the drawing board and into the hands of the buying public.  With the right labeling your brainstorm could become the next great thing, after all Coca Cola was just a syrup made behind the counter at small town pharmacy once.  You’ve got a product to sell, Buckley Graphics has what you need to sell it, and there is no better time than the present.  It is a new day and your public awaits you!

Book It

When the scrapbooking industry came into being, a door opened on a world of arts, crafts and archiving that had no ceiling.  Papers for the most creative pages, tags and cut-outs in every theme imaginable and of course labels took front and center as a form of page embellishment that is whimsical, colorful and affordable.  Buckley Graphics saw the potential and developed a means of printing the high standard archival quality label, packaged and ready to display, required by discriminating scrapbookers and the people who sell to them.  There are new designs and shapes, brilliant colors and inks in every variety available to the scrapbook supplier and Buckley Graphics is leading the way in the new technologies that put us on top in the realm of label manufacturing.  We take you from design to delivery without the usual bumps and bruises associated with the custom label industry.  We’ve done it since 1964 and we’ve gotten so good at it we could write a book.

As I See It

"New York City celebrating the surrender of Japan. They threw anything and kissed anybody in Times Square." National archive number 80-G-377094 Naval Historical Center #520697 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There are images, captured in photography that have literally become our view of how things have happened in our history and our daily lives.  The photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt of a young sailor kissing a nurse on V-Day in Times Square has become our memory of the day that we declared, in essence, the end of World War II.  That kiss is thought of as the start of our people coming home from overseas, it was the start of peace, and not only peace, but victory, for some it marked the beginning of life without tyranny.  The week after the photograph was taken it appeared in a spread in Life Magazine that featured photographs from all over the country where celebrations of the end of the war were taking place.  Even for those of us who weren’t born yet, that picture, often called simply “The Kiss”, symbolizes the beginning of the end of a war that held the world captive for too many years, a war that we were ready to be done with, but proud to have won.  It is amazing, astonishing even, what a photograph can do, what it can say to the world.  It is a tool that has come full circle, from its primitive beginning to today, when it has bravely embraced technology.  When Eric Lars Bakke/Photographer takes your picture he brings all of this knowledge with him, because he knows that the time has come for you to make some history of your own.