I share your concern over possible mixed messages, and I also am reminded of marks like 'impark' and the like, so I thought I'd aim at a symbol rather than a ligature. I welcome your thoughts...
I will be more than happy to experiment further. While in judging mode, the designer ranked 1st can submit revisions, so I'll need to be moved (at least temporarily) to 1st place.
Also, can you elaborate a bit more? I'm not exactly sure what you mean by 'pop out more'...
Do you also design websites? How much will you charge to design a website around the logo. Just the template, header, menu footer, fonts, etc. Not all pages.
I also have a wordpress blog, do you work with wordpress themes?
How about designing a business card?
Would you be ok working with me if I pick another logo and use you for design? Just trying to get an idea.
Yes, we do web pages, wordpress themes, printed material, etc. Needless to say, we would prefer to work with our own branding as the foundation for such. As for rates, we can discuss that off site once the contest has concluded. We generally work on an hourly basis. By clicking through on the "RetroMetro_Steve" below my RM avatar, you can navigate to off-site contact info.
If you need to see further iterations of the contest design, don't hesitate to ask - I'm at your disposal...