Logo Motion The winner of our ugliest logo contest gets a new look.

At a time when makeover shows are all the rage, we got in the spirit and held Entrepreneur's Ugliest Logo Contest (Powered by LogoWorks) to help businesses spruce up their image. Logo design firm LogoWorks gave grand-prize winner J.A. Cunningham Equipment Inc. a logo makeover, plus $2,500 worth of promotional products, and template designs for a brochure, a Yellow Pages ad and a PowerPoint presentation. Clete Cunningham, J.A. Cunningham Equipment's vice president, says the Philadelphia-based, family-owned welding supplies and equipment business has been around for 60 years--and so has its logo. It was time for an update.

Customers have often misinterpreted what J.A. Cunningham's original, hand-drawn logo represents. An electrode holder using a stick-welding process may have been a commonplace image when the business started, but it now represents old technology. The logo also fails to indicate that the company manufactures and distributes welding supplies and equipment. Cunningham hoped for a new logo that would provide a better visual representation of the business and replace the antiquated look he worried made them appear slow or conservative.

Enter LogoWorks, whose logo-design process delivers several concepts for customers to choose from within 72 business hours, at an affordable price (packages range from $265 to $549). Morgan Lynch, founder and president of LogoWorks, says J.A. Cunningham's new logo conveys a modern company--"it's more abstract." The sunburst behind the tanks emits a positive image, while the use of gradients on the welding adds depth and dimension. (Lynch notes Apple Computer uses gradients frequently, since they exude a "very high-tech feel.") Putting the company name right on the logo should also dispel questions about what J.A. Cunningham does.