Note: We decided not to just go ahead and list the sites that we designed ourselves. That's not to say our sites can't compete with those listed here (see for yourself, check out our web design clients page), it just seems really unethical to pretend to be objective and then turn around and choose your own sites and those of your friends/business partners as the best, especially when you don't reveal your connection to them.

If you know of a web site that should be listed, let us know!

Comments about these sites? Contact us!

Keeping in mind how incredibly subjective all of this is, here are some sites that consistently get good comments. We've added extended comments:

4Kids Treehouse - List of links to kid-friendly web sites, sponsored by Four Lakes Colorgraphics. Although I don't remember any content other than links, just collecting them all is worthy of a few kudos because, as any parent knows, it can be difficult to find good sites for children.

Advertising, Boelter & Lincoln - Much like you would gather from the name, an advertising agency. Some ad agencies haven't crossed over into web design very well (or maybe it's just that they're too busy with oher projects to worry about their site), but this place seems to have its act together.

American Girl - Online magazine for girls, sponsored by the Pleasant Company. Activities, stories, contests, advice column -- good stuff! The design is great, and the ever-changing graphics of legs that mismatch the bodies above is a wonderful touch.

Bicycling Community Page - Covers Madison and Dane County. Pretty comprehensive. It has what's missing on a lot of otherwise good pages: content, useful content, and lots of it.

Burman Coffee - - Madison Wholesale/Retailer of Green Coffee Beans.
(MBIG finds Burman Coffee to be an attractive, informative and useful site for the purchase of coffee beans for roasting.)

Century Publishing - Century Magazine publishes speculative fiction. The design of this site is top-notch, and unique. There are also excerpts from stories to whet your appetite.

CyberMad - Love it or hate it, it's nationally famous. Won some big awards for its design and absurd humor, which is kind of like The Onion, but not quite as good.

The Daily Page - - The Isthmus weekly newspaper posts daily web updates. Crazy, isn't it? All that time every single day and then it just disappears the next. There are many interesting and informative sections, including the best local movie listings, a bulletin board for community input, and actual online local news content! Shocking, isn't it? The Wisconsin State Journal and the Capital Times only play lip-service to this concept.

DeanCare - Dean Health System of Madison, integrated healthcare group best known for the Dean Medical Center. This site has a nice corporate design.

Douglass Pianos - Piano sales and tuning in Middleton. Nice graphics, but no music files? One of the first smileys handed out, before the competition got really fierce.

Fighting Minds - Creative site, better shirts! Out of the ordinary. Mr Hammerway will make you chuckle.

Heartland Credit Union - - Dane County financial cooperative. This site is quite good, especially compared to most banks. You can do online banking (with a secure version of Netscape) and find useful financial information. The graphics are good too.

House Rabbit Society - Bunnies! A volunteer, non-profit organization rescues abandoned rabbits and tries to educate the public about how to treat the animals properly. Information is presented in an organized and entertaining manner. Includes a list of rabbits available for adoption, most with photos. The Dane County Humane Society should take notes.

InfoJunkies Anonymous - - Organized groups of links to national news, weather, business, sports and software sites, and other topics of interest. Want to browse web sites from around the world, but you don't want to waste time clunking through search engines for the few gems you dig up? Go here first.

madiscene - - Designed to be the shortest path between you and something to do in Madison. Provides a searchable database of things to do and places to go, organized by category and location. Also mobile so you can take it with you on your Palm, Windows CE, or Pocket PC handheld.

Madison: A Model City by John Nolen - John Nolen's 1911 report to the Madison Park and Pleasure Drive Association. Includes the text and pictures, showing Nolen's fascinating insight into urban landscape planning.

Malcolm Marketing Communications - Are you ready for a fresh perspective? Good interaction on the page links. Well designed.

Meriter - This site has great depth and content. There's lots of good information on healthcare and all of the Meriter family of companies.

Most on Madison - Madison Newspapers, Inc., snapped up the coveted www.madison.com domain name. Then it used its resources in the Wisconsin State Journal and The Capital Times to quickly become a big name in the local web market by transfering some of their old content (Rhythm section, their annual guide to Madison) and printing lots of free ads in their papers. It is a site everyone uses at one point.

Muskrat Central - John Kovalic's Wild Life cartoon on the web. It's local and pretty good. Muskrat Central can be considered one of the pioneering local sites, because Kovalic started it long before having a web page became a craze. He also does a cartoon called Beached for an internet site that probably doesn't qualify as local, but you may want to check it out too.

The Onion - Newspaper publishes such hard-hitting investigative journalism as "Terrorist Bombing Damages Bob Dole's Outer Hull" and "Clinton Deploys Vowels to Bosnia." Most of the time it's dead on. It has an astute ability to capture the idiocy of most of what passes for news today.

Oscar Mayer - "Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer web page..." Includes a sing along (also the "Bologna Song"), talent search, the World Wide Weener internet info page, history and QuickTime VR movies of the Wienermobile and, oh, product information. The site would probably rank as one of the best anywhere, local or world-wide.

Patch Products, Inc. - Puzzle and game company, based in Beloit. Makers of Tri-Bond, Blurt, Mad Gab, Tutti Frutti and other products. The navigation is somewhat odd, but the graphics are right up there, and it has samples of what the game play of its products would be like, which is useful.

Trek Bicycles - Bicycle manufacturer based in Waterloo, Wisconsin.

UW Badger Men's Soccer, semi-official web site - University of Wisconsin-Madison men's soccer team, as seen by a fan. Updated semi-regularly. This is smiley number two for the designer, as she also did the Century site (and runs the magazine... definitely an overachiever).

Verlo Mattress Company - Factory direct mattress retailer, with stores in Wisconsin and eight other states. Its central offices are in Whitewater. Nice graphics, and they try to liven things up with humorous ways of doing things.

The Why Files - An exploration of the science behind the news. Entertaining, educational and Madison-based. Produced by the National Institute for Science Education (NISE) at the UW. Aimed at kids, but adults can get use out of it too. And the visuals are exciting. An all around great site.

Wisconsin Power and Light - State power utility, now doing business as Alliant Energy. Nice looking site, organized.

Wisconsin Public Television - Awesome graphics and a wealth of content, including program schedules, FAQs, in-depth information about locally-produced shows and other PBS programs, as well as how to become a member to help support public television.

WMTV Channel 15 - Madison's NBC television affiliate. Graphics are nice and the design is good, and there's content.

The Wonders of Physics - Fun and educational demonstrations about physics. Public presentations are held in Madison in February, check the site for free ticket information. Also arranges trips to southern Wisconsin schools and sells videotapes and lecture kits.

WebCams (or "gadgets attached to the internet")

Kohlcam - No, it's not pictures of U.S. Senator Herb Kohl running around Washington DC (though that does raise an interesting possibility for participatory democracy...) -- it's a live camera streaming video over the web pointed at the construction of the Kohl Center.

Tableau Web Camera Services - Pics from Black Earth, of all places.

Tyrol Basin Ski Area - Watch the skiers, check snow conditions.

UPL-Cam - Image from a live video shot of the Undergraduate Projects Laboratory at UW-Madison.

Widen-Cam - Streaming video of the fish tank at Widen Enterprises.