As per the attachments, I created a new block called "Featured Vendors" and manually added the vendors. The block looks OK but I want to have the vendor logo in front of the vendor name if possible. Can this be done by modifying a specific template? I realise it might be issues with the sizing of logos which can be all shapes and sizse, so if that's too complicated, how about just adding an icon of the first letter of the vendor's company name, as they do on YouTube and other sites where a photo wasn't uploaded.
The template is located here
design/themes/THEME/templates/blocks/companies_list.tpl
But you should call additional function to retrieve vendor logos from database