Since its establishment in 1948, PUMA has become one of the most recognisable and sought-after sports brands in the world.

In recent news, the German company has recruited some top-tier brand ambassadors and style influencers including Rihanna, Big Sean, and of course, Selena Gomez.

These celebrities will be rocking out in PUMA gear, which will obviously sport that iconic logo, which has been universally recognisable now for the best part of seven decades.

According to Highsnobiety, PUMA‘s original logo featuring a puma cat jumping through a capital “D”, was a nod to the founder of the brand, Rudolf Dassler.

Dassler originally wanted to call the brand ‘RUDA’, a combination of the first two letters of his first and last name. He changed his mind because he wanted all of his products to embody the characteristics of a puma cat.

A year later, the words “Rudolf,” “Dassler,” and “Schuhfabrik” (shoe factory) were added to the design.

In 1968, the logo was stripped down to feature a leaping puma with no border or text, and two years later, the design was refined once again, this time by cartoonist Lutz Backes.

Following experiments with two different fonts in the mid-’70s, PUMA settled on the uppercase script that remains to this day, adding the silhouette of a puma leaping over the upper-right corner of the text.

This design from 1979 remains largely untouched to this day.

You can check out a more detailed history of the logo here:

You can check out all of their latest South African releases over at PUMA SELECT.

[source:highsnobiety]