At Riverbank Products, we take pride in helping growing companies sharpen their image, communicate their vision, and elevate their brand across all channels. One of our most recent projects highlights the full scope of what we do: partnering with 4R Marketing as they expand operations and strengthen their presence in the oils and wax industeries
4R Marketing, based in Smackover, Arkansas, has been steadily growing in recent years. With that growth came the need for a fresh, modern digital presence that reflects their professionalism and forward momentum. Riverbank Products was proud to lead the complete redesign of their new website, fourrmarketing.com, creating a clean, responsive platform that clearly communicates who they are, what they do, and where they’re going next.
But our collaboration didn’t stop there.
When 4R Marketing announced their latest expansion, a significant investment in the rail yard infrastructure at their Camden facility—they needed high-quality visual content to support the story. Riverbank Products provided professional photography, drone video, and aerial stills to capture the scope of the expansion and the scale of their operations. These visuals were featured in a recent press release that we helped craft providing the media with a strong visual narrative to accompany the exciting news for this south Arkansas business.
Whether it’s building a website from the ground up, fine-tuning a brand identity, or capturing story telling imagery and aerial media assets, Riverbank Products offers a full suite of creative and technical services tailored to meet the needs of growing businesses.
We’re proud to support 4R Marketing as they continue to expand, and we’re excited to keep delivering the quality and care our clients count on.
Interested in elevating your brand or telling your company’s story more effectively? Contact Riverbank Products today—we’d love to learn about your goals and how we can help you achieve them.
Having an awesome product is one thing. Having one that looks good on a store shelf is all together different. We can help
Crafting the Perfect Packaging for Richland Creek Farm & Market
At Riverbank Products, we love helping local businesses bring their vision to life through thoughtful design. One of our recent projects was with Richland Creek Farm & Market, a brand known for its specialty product Mayhaws, a native southern fruit tree. Richland Creek takes the berries from thes beautiful trees and sells mayhaw fruit as well as artisanal jellies and jams and farm other farm fresh produce.
The Richland Creek Farm and market is known for its charming french country aesthetic and high-quality small-batch products. We had the pleasure of designing packaging graphics for their delicious jellies, and couldn’t be more excited about the final result!
A Packaging Concept Rooted in Tradition
Richland Creek Farm & Market wanted packaging that reflected their brand’s rustic elegance while making their jelly products stand out on retail shelves. To achieve this, we designed retail boxes that house three jars of their signature jellies, combining both function and style.
The Design: Rustic Meets Refined
Brown cardboard was selected as the primary material for the boxes, giving them an organic, artisanal touch that aligns with the handcrafted nature of Richland Creek’s jellies. The black text and graphics create a striking contrast, ensuring the branding is clear and visually appealing. The overall look embraces simplicity while exuding a timeless, French country charm that complements the brand’s identity.
Functionality Meets Aesthetic
Beyond aesthetics, we focused on creating packaging that is practical and protective. The sturdy design ensures the jars remain secure while also making the box easy to carry and display. The layout of the graphics enhances readability, allowing customers to quickly recognize the brand and its premium offerings.
Our Packaging Expertise
Our work with Richland Creek Farm & Market is just one example of how we create packaging that resonates with a brand’s identity. We’ve also had the opportunity to design packaging for Havoc Aid, a private label promotional energy drink for Havoc Boats, and a previous product we marketed ourselves called Bayed Up BBQ rub seasoning. Each project showcases our ability to blend creativity with functionality, ensuring that packaging not only protects the product but also enhances its market appeal.
Bringing the Vision to Life
Working with Richland Creek Farm & Market on this project was a rewarding experience. Their commitment to quality and tradition inspired us to craft a packaging design that not only showcases their product beautifully but also tells their story.
If you’re in need of custom packaging solutions that align with your brand’s unique aesthetic, Riverbank Products is here to help. Contact us and let’s bring your vision to life.
We’re fast approaching the end of 2023. It was a great year in some ways. I felt the Lord’s provision and direction in a lot of different areas this year. I got to work with some great clients. Really helped some people along the way. Made new friends and new clients. Experienced God’s goodness and mercy in many areas.
A lot of people are making plans and resolutions for the new year. And while we can and should work towards goals each year and hope and pray for good things to happen. We also have to be obedient and listen to God’s leading. I’m not suggesting that we should pray for bad things, but I promise you this, God’s blessings are not always health, wealth, and prosperity. I find real blessings are more often direction changes that test and strengthen our faith in his good and perfect will for the lives of those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose.
The economy is tough. A lot of things are not as we would like them to be in the world. There have been many times this year when I wasn’t sure where my next project would come from, yet he provided over and above what I needed. And he allowed me to capture some of his majesty on display in the process. That’s such a blessing.
The first image in the video below is of a wren that nested in a gourd behind my house. A good friend of my dad’s grew them last year. I cleaned a few of them up and hung them here and there. This little chain of events led up to this photo. God used us to provide for this little defenseless wren. And in Matthew 6:26 we’re told, “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”
Ponder that a little bit.
We’re certainly responsible for our actions and are to work hard and make wise decisions. But we’re not called to work harder and be smarter on our own. We’re to seek wisdom from the Lord and his righteousness and then the king who owns the cattle on a thousand hills is sure to give us all that we need. And when our heart’s highest desire is for him then we are sure to find what we’re after. That means we’re called to live by faith and be holy as he is holy. We’re called to be the light in a dark world. The economy is crazy and life is full of twists and turns. But we are to let our light so shine before men that they may see our good deeds and honor our Father in heaven. Matthew 15:16.
So with that in mind, I hope you have a fantastic 2024. Look forward to working with you in 2024!!!
Some of you may know about the photography we do, but the majority of the work that we actually do is more commercial advertising in nature. Work usually begins as photography or videography but then uses those images that have been captured to create advertising-related content for websites we maintain, brochures, magazine ads, or just content for social media pages.
Here is a recent TV commercial for T.P. Outdoors Monroe. This season, T.P. Outdoors Monroe began featuring one super hot in-store deal good for that week only. These commercials air weekly on the T.P. Outdoors Adventures TV show. First, we spent a day filming some products to be featured in the first few weeks of the season for special deals. Then it all had to be put together.
The T.P. Outdoors logo redesign for the Monroe store happened last year so it wasn’t part of this specific project but we did that too. The new Wild Bill’s Steals and Deals logo was created from a photo taken during a previous turkey hunt that was shot for T.P. Outdoors Adventures. From there, the photo was edited in photoshop to make the photo a little more cartoonish. Adobe Illustrator was used for completing the logo design for these ads. After that, the project was moved to Adobe After Effects.
This is where the magic really happened to animate the cartoon character and build the commercial. Animation like this required frame-by-frame animation to make things move smoothly. Rights to use a cartoon theif were purchased from an online resource but it still didn’t fit the exact look and actions that were needed for this spot. After Effects was used to edit the character for this. It’s an extremely time-consuming process and there are two different uses of the cartoon thief so it had to be done twice, but I think it worked pretty well.
While In After Effects, motion graphics templates were created for the products that would be featured in this series of commercials. It takes a little time to create these templates, but since the commercials would run weekly, it was much easier to create a template and then use that template over and over again. Once the templates and motion graphics were completed, everything then moved over to Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing and put all together into 30-second tv commercials.
All in all, there is over a week’s worth of work that went into this 30-second video using multiple software packages and years of experience doing this type of work.
The other day, I shared a link to my personal Facebook page where a friend/client is using some of my photos for an online modeling competition called “Ms. Starts and Stripes“. Turns out I have three friends and two clients who have entered the competition. Jessica McGee, Cambry Thurmon, and Charlotte Rockett are all in the competition to be “Ms. Stars and Stripes”. The winner gets $25,000 a magazine spread in STAR Magazine and will act as a spokesperson for a year traveling to events like like the PBR and others
Jessica McGee
Cambry Thurmon
To win, competitors submit photos and a bio where they solicit votes from friends through social media. Each competitor gets one free vote each day and can buy extra votes to raise money for a charity. In this case, the charity is American Royal, a Kansas City based nonprofit that hosts rodeo and equine events as well as does a lot of Ag education outreach.
This is not my first involvement with this type of contest. Last year, I did some photos for Santanna Mitchell who competed in the “Ms. Health and Fitness” competition. It had the same format but was based around fitness and supported a first responders charity.
However, there have been some questions raised about whether these competitions and charities are on the up and up. Some of the information online appears vague and the competition asks for credit card information which kind of raises some red flags for many. If my photos are going to be involved with something and if I’m going to ask my friends to help vote or support something, I wanted to make absolutely sure that it is in fact legit. So, I did some digging.
First, I looked all over the websites for clues as to who is connected with the organization. I found two contacts other than the organization itself to verify what was online. First I contacted American Royal. They were aware of the competition but their PR person had only been with them for a couple of months and wasn’t fully up to speed yet on the exact ins and outs of the competition or fundraising efforts but told me a company called Colossal is involved with the competition. They are in effect the “operator” of these types of competitions. Colossal is a for-profit online marketing company. They take a percentage of the funds raised, but I believe around 70-75% of the funds raised go to the chosen charity.
After going through the Colossal website and social pages, I had more questions than answers because everything was recently posted. But I found that they were connected with a non-profit organization called DTCare. I left a voicemail with them asking for information.
I then reached out to Natalie Kovarik via e-mail. Natalie is listed as the host of the competition. Natalie is an influencer in the ranching/agriculture world with a large Instagram following. However, I didn’t immediately see any connection between here and the competition. I didn’t hear back from Natalie directly, but just a short time after e-mailing her, I received an e-mail directly from the MS Stars and Stripes organization.
Natalie had obviously forwarded my e-mail to them because they knew that I had contacted both Natalie and the American Royal. I still had a few questions in my mind, but the e-mail confirmed that a lot of what was going on was in fact legitimate. I responded to their e-mail and I did have a few more serious questions that I was looking for answers to.
I guess my due diligence had set off a fire within the organization because the next day, not only did I hear from the Ms. Stars and Stripes organization, but I’m pretty sure I received phone calls from virtually everyone involved in any level of the organization. The first phone calls that I got were from DTCare.
DTCare is a US-based charity also doing some cool charity work overseas in Poland, Ukraine, and other regions. I’m not an accountant so I don’t exactly understand this part, but I believe for some tax purposes, the funds raised pass through another nonprofit partner called DTCare. I don’t think DTCare is using any of the funds but DTcare is then passing the funds on to the American Royal or whatever the chosen charity is for the competition. While on the phone I got to speak directly to one of DTCare’s accountants and another Administrative staffer who filled me in on so much of what DTCare is doing and specifically how they work with Colossal.
Next, I received a phone call from a guy from Ms. Stars and Strips competition. He went over all of the concerns I’d raised about the organization, the Ms. Health and Fitness competition, and several other similar competitions/fundraisers that they work with. They have now been running these types of events for the past 8 years.
Before the day was over I got a call from the founder of DTCare. We had a great conversation about how the organization works and other things they are involved with.
I can say that I’ve never had so many people act so quickly and so fully address concerns with any organization. After all of this, to the best of my knowledge, Yes, this is a legit competition. It is a legit charity. If you are so inclined, go vote for one of these girls and help a charity. I don’t remember exactly how far or how much money has been raised through them, but I do know that last year, Santanna Mitchell made it pretty far in the competition last year.
If I can help anyone build their personal brand or help a charity with my photos, I’d love to work with you.
