The Puma Logo: The Leaping Cat and the Formstrip
Puma began with a quarrel between two brothers in a small Bavarian town. What it built afterwards is a lesson in how to look fast: a cat in mid-leap and a stripe that sweeps along the side of a shoe. Neither needs the name beside it to be recognised.
Puma is also the brand that had to define itself against a rival from the very start. That pressure shaped a logo that is all movement, where its neighbour chose order.
The Other Dassler
Rudolf and Adolf Dassler made shoes together in Herzogenaurach until 1948, when they split for good. Adi kept the original factory and founded Adidas. Rudolf set up on the other side of the river Aurach, first calling his company Ruda, from the start of his first and last names, and soon renaming it Puma.
The new name did a job the old one could not. Ruda was a contraction that meant nothing to anyone outside the family; a puma is an animal everyone can picture, quick, light and a little dangerous. A name that already carries an image gives the logo a head start.
The Formstrip, 1958
Like the Adidas stripes, Puma’s first mark began as part of the shoe. In 1958 the company added the Formstrip, a band of leather that starts narrow at the heel and widens as it curves towards the toe, helping to hold the foot in place. Where the Adidas stripes are straight and parallel, the Formstrip is a single swooping line.
That difference matters. Next to each other on a football pitch, the two brands were easy to tell apart at a glance, even in a grainy photograph. If your market already has a strong mark in it, the fastest way to be noticed is to do the opposite of it.
The Leaping Cat
The Puma cat arrived in the late 1960s. It is usually credited to the German cartoonist Lutz Backes, and it shows a puma at full stretch, front legs reaching forward, tail curling up behind. It is drawn as a flat silhouette with no inner detail, so it works stitched on a tongue, printed on a shirt or shrunk to a few millimetres on a sock.
Animal logos often fail because they are drawn too literally, with fur, eyes and shading that disappear at small sizes. The Puma cat keeps only the pose. The shape alone says speed, which is all a sports brand needs it to say.
The Wordmark
The name is set in heavy, rounded capitals, tightly spaced, and since the late 1970s it has usually sat beside the cat, which leaps up and over the last letter. The type is chunky where the cat is slender, so the two balance each other: one is solid and readable, the other light and moving.
Puma has adjusted the lettering over the years but never replaced it. Because the cat and the Formstrip can each stand alone, the wordmark only has to be clear. It does not need to be clever.
Moments on the Podium
Puma’s marks became famous through the people wearing them. At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics the sprinter Tommie Smith raised his fist on the podium in black socks, with his Puma Suedes beside him; the picture became one of the most famous sports photographs ever taken. Pelé wore Puma at the 1970 World Cup, and four decades later Usain Bolt crossed the line in Beijing in Puma spikes.
A logo cannot create moments like those, but it can be ready for them. In each case the cat or the Formstrip was big, simple and high-contrast enough to read in a photograph taken from the stands.
Two Marks, One Feeling
Puma uses the cat and the Formstrip together and apart. A shoe might carry the stripe on its side and the cat on its tongue; a shirt might carry only the cat. It works because both marks share the same idea, a curve in motion, so they feel like one family.
If you give a brand more than one mark, make sure they have something in common, whether that is a shape, an angle or a colour. Otherwise you are not building one brand, you are building two.
Puma and Adidas
Side by side, the two brands founded by the Dassler brothers show two ways to say sport. Adidas uses straight parallel lines, stacked and repeated like a uniform. Puma uses a single curve and an animal mid-jump. Compare them with the Nike swoosh, which sits somewhere in between: one gesture, like Puma, but abstract, like Adidas.
What to Take From the Cat
Puma shows that a name with a built-in image is a gift to a logo designer, that an animal mark should keep the pose and drop the detail, and that a newcomer can stand out by doing the opposite of the market leader. If you are drawing your own symbol, try it as a solid silhouette first. Our free logo maker lets you test shapes quickly and see whether they still read at the size of a shoe tongue.
