Best of Category

Puma PT3 Ultramagnetic Collection

Among the big three sneaker brands, Puma strives hardest for an identity. Denied Nike's weekend-warrior loyalty and Adidas's old-school authenticity, Puma now cross-trains almost exclusively in fashion and design. Seeking its own sport to colonize and accessorize, the shoemaker hit, improbably, upon Ping-Pong.

Eager to appeal to hipsters more than Chinese Olympians, Puma charged the New York firm Aruliden with creating a grand prize and emblem for its Puma Table Tennis Tournaments (a.k.a. "PT3"), held annually since 2006 in downtown Manhattan. There was no brief, no market research to consider, and no tradition of table tennis gear for the designers to draw upon, either. All they had to play with was the Ping-Pong ball and paddle.

Principals Rinat Aruh and Johan Liden first toyed with reengineering the standard glue-and-balsa paddle for the carbon-fiber age, but ultimately balked at such heresy. Electing instead to invent a sleeker package for the sport, they produced a balls-and-paddle set encased in a smooth expanse of milky black or white plastic and cushioned in EVA foam-the material science of a bicycle helmet mated with the aesthetics of an iPod.

Their coup—the one that lends the set its name—was embedding magnets in the rim of each case, which snap it together seamlessly. "Look at the role magnets play in lipsticks or the power cables of the MacBook," Aruh says. "There's such beautiful functionality involved."

The jurors couldn't have agreed more. They discovered the Ultramagnetic Collection with a joyous whoop and brandished the cases all morning. ("We thought this could be the paddle itself!" said Burks.) They not only praised the use of materials, but also raved, while practicing their forehands, about the understated application of Puma's logo-a single cat debossed on each case. "I love that there's no printing on this," said Reyes. "The lack of a big logo makes it unique. You have so much loud stuff on the shelves these days."

"You're not trying to show off the brand," said Burks. "You're just carrying this useful thing. And maybe that's why I like it. It's Puma, but it doesn't have to scream it. It's confident about what's inside."

Design Aruliden (New York): Rinat Aruh and Johan Liden, principals; Tyler Askew, graphic designer
Client Puma
Materials ABS plastic, EVA foam