About Us

What we are

Markgraf Web Design are a group of like minded people who wanted to combine their love of the Neotropical environment and their abilities in the area of Information Technology to offer web design and administration services to the market in general, but specifically to cash strapped Non-Profit organizations. We have been involved in the NGO world for some time and we felt that we understand the needs of organizations working to benefit, not just the environment, but in many other areas of need as well. There never is enough money to fund the ever expanding requirements of the organization, but at the same time it is important to have an attractive presence on the Internet.

Enter Markgraf Web Design! We offer low cost services using state of the art Open Source development tools to build sites tailored to the needs of our clients.

Why the Name

We chose to name our organization after the first important naturalist to spend time in the neotropics. Georg Markgraf (or Marcgraf or Marcgrave) was born in Saxony in 1610. He came to the Dutch colony in Pernambuco (Brazil) in 1638 and stayed until shortly before his death, in 1644. While short, his life was very important in terms of the natural history of the region - the Atlantic rain forest of northeastern Brazil. Together with Willem Piso, Markgraf prepared the first major work on the botany and zoology of the region. Their Historia Naturalis Brasiliae is a beautiful description of the many plants, mammals, birds, fish and insects that they encountered in their six year expedition. In addition to this work, Markgraf built the first astronomical observatory in the Americas.