Branding starts whether or not you have a company name, store or website.  But it becomes relevant with a name, and that name becomes branded with how the community you serve perceives you and your business.  Design allows us to add a positive spin, holding the name in a new light, and logo design allows us to create an iconic image which is easily recognizable.  The logo doesn't have influence, good or bad.  But it becomes a representation of how your people and services, internal and external, associate with your company and brand it.  That is why we use pysochology and research to associate things positively, and it all starts with the typography or icon used throughout a brand.

I have been designing brands and websites since before 1996.  I have had the best fine arts education you can get without actually getting the Bachelor's degree at Augustana College (now Augustana University).  I designed my own logo when I was 14 and have been designing them ever since.

Typography can be the foundation of a logo.  Or it could be a graphic image.  But the company name, how it is seen, how  the text or graphic is employed for your name brand, displayed in your documents and presentations, is also influential.  Make it a positive first step, even before the logo, in addition and complementary to it, invest in good fonts.

By invest, I mean time.  There are many great freeware fonts available.  I even happen to have designed a few.  Take a look through my freeware font catalogs.

I am starting to venture out into commercial digital typeface creations, now.  It isn't easy, there are a great number of seemingly unknown rules to building a font, and I tend to push some of those boundries.  Check out some of my stuff...