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Jonathan Mak, a student at the Polytechnic University, poses with his laptop showing …
A Hong Kong design student said on Friday he was overwhelmed and felt "unreal" after his sombre logo in tribute to Apple founder Steve Jobs caused a worldwide Internet sensation.
The design, featuring Jobs's silhouette incorporated into the bite of
a white Apple logo on a black background, has gone viral on the
Internet since news of his death.
"I feel so unreal," Jonathan Mak, a second year graphic design student at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, told AFP, after he was inundated with tens of thousands of emails and messages on his Twitter account.
"You don't get to 180 thousands notes without feeling slightly
insane," the 19-year-old posted on another microblogging site Tumblr
Friday, referring to the messages he has received.Mak said newspapers in the United States and Germany have contacted him about buying the copyright to use his logo and had received job offers.
"I am flattered by the attention but I would like to focus on my study before taking on any full-time job," said the bespectacled student, adding that he was trying to cope with his new-found fame.
"I'm quite busy now actually as I'm trying to finish a school project."
When asked about whether he would
be targeting commercial opportunities, Mak said he was considering
contacting Apple on copyright issues because his design is based on
Apple's own logo.
Some merchandisers have reportedly
used his logo for commemorative memorabilia for Jobs such as t-shirts
and caps that are being sold on the Internet.
"I will consider using any proceeds
I make from the copyright for cancer research, as suggested by some
people to me on the Internet," he said. Jobs died at 56 of pancreatic
cancer.
Mak said he first came up with the
design after Jobs announced his resignation in late August, but the logo
received little attention at the time.
The teenager said the Apple founder had inspired him in his design.
"He was a minimalist, which is the way I would like to emphasise in my design -- fewer elements but a powerful message."
"Steve Jobs strongly believed in
his own ideas and continued with his beliefs no matter how people
criticised him. He was courageous," said Mak.
Credit: Jonathan Mak Long
The 19-year-old posted the image, the Apple logo with the bite changed to a profile of Jobs, to his Tumblr blog. Known as Jonathan Mak, he initially received about 80 notes on the image. Then word came this past Wednesday that Jobs had died, after a long battle with cancer. Mak reposted the homage, which this time caught fire on the Web, attracting an almost immediate response of 10,000 likes and reblogs on his Tumblr site and surging to 180,000 -- in one day. Comments included "awesome invention like steve jobs." One thought it should be the "new Apple logo." Another wanted to "use it as a tattoo."
Speaking in fluent English (which he said he learned from watching the TV show "Friends"), the Polytechnic University School of Design student told Yahoo! in a Skype interview that the image was a tribute to Jobs's contributions to the world: "I wanted to commemorate him. He's such an integral part of Apple. I thought it would be fitting to include him in the Apple logo." Long added, "With Jobs gone, Apple is literally missing a piece."
The artist was inspired by the uncompromising personality of the creative genius. He said of Jobs: "He had this vision that he was not afraid to commit to. That's how he broke new ground. His commitment and belief in himself is what inspire me." The designer's vision for his own work is an aesthetic that joins a simple graphic element with a richer meaning, giving the viewer, as he put it, an "a-ha moment."
The cyber tribute that became a hit, and along with attracting media attention, the logo found itself as the preferred profile pic on Ashton Kutcher's Twitter account and on merchandise featured on eBay. While the design prodigy has received several job offers, but he hasn't acted on them; "I'm still a student," he said. The artist has a portfolio of minimalist design, but don't call him an Apple fanboy. "I just got my first MacBook Pro a year ago," he admitted -- and he still doesn't own an iPhone.
Asked whether he'd gotten any response from Apple, Mak said he had emailed CEO Tim Cook but so far hadn't heard back.
Steve Jobs leans against his wife, Laurene Powell Jobs (Lea Suzuki/San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis)
For all of his years in the spotlight at the helm of Apple, Steve Jobs in many ways remains an inscrutable figure — even in his death. Fiercely private, Jobs concealed most specifics about his personal life, from his curious family life to the details of his battle with pancreatic cancer — a disease that ultimately claimed him on Wednesday, at the age of 56.
While the CEO and co-founder of Apple
steered most interviews away from the public fascination with his
private life, there's plenty we know about Jobs the person, beyond the
Mac and the iPhone. If anything, the obscure details of his interior
life paint a subtler, more nuanced portrait of how one of the finest
technology minds of our time grew into the dynamo that we remember him as today.
1. Early life and childhoodJobs was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1955. He was adopted shortly after his birth and reared near Mountain View, California by a couple named Clara and Paul Jobs. His adoptive father — a term that Jobs openly objected to — was a machinist for a laser company and his mother worked as an accountant.
Later in life, Jobs discovered the identities of his estranged parents. His birth mother, Joanne Simpson, was a graduate student at the time and later a speech pathologist; his biological father, Abdulfattah John Jandali, was a Syrian Muslim who left the country at age 18 and reportedly now serves as the vice president of a Reno, Nevada casino. While Jobs reconnected with Simpson in later years, he and his biological father remained estranged.
Reed College
The lead mind behind the most successful company on the planet never graduated from college, in fact, he didn't even get close. After graduating from high school in Cupertino, California — a town now synonymous with 1 Infinite Loop, Apple's headquarters — Jobs enrolled in Reed College in 1972. Jobs stayed at Reed (a liberal arts university in Portland, Oregon) for only one semester, dropping out quickly due to the financial burden the private school's steep tuition placed on his parents. In his famous 2005 commencement speech to Stanford University, Jobs said of his time at Reed: "It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5 cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple."
Breakout for the Atari
Jobs is well known for his innovations in personal computing, mobile tech, and software, but he also helped create one of the best known video games of all-time. In 1975, Jobs was tapped by Atari to work on the Pong-like game Breakout. He was reportedly offered $750 for his development work, with the possibility of an extra $100 for each chip eliminated from the game's final design. Jobs recruited Steve Wozniak (later one of Apple's other founders) to help him with the challenge. Wozniak managed to whittle the prototype's design down so much that Atari paid out a $5,000 bonus — but Jobs kept the bonus for himself, and paid his unsuspecting friend only $375, according to Wozniak's own autobiography.
4. The wife he leaves behind
Like the rest of his family life, Jobs kept his marriage out of the public eye. Thinking back on his legacy conjures images of him commanding the stage in his trademark black turtleneck and jeans, and those solo moments are his most iconic. But at home in Palo Alto, Jobs was raising a family with his wife, Laurene, an entrepreneur who attended the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton business school and later received her MBA at Stanford, where she first met her future husband.
For all of his single-minded dedication to the company he built from the ground up, Jobs actually skipped a meeting to take Laurene on their first date: "I was in the parking lot with the key in the car, and I thought to myself, 'If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman?' I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town and we've been together ever since."
In 1991, Jobs and Powell were married in the Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park, and the marriage was officiated by Kobin Chino, a Zen Buddhist monk.
5. His sister is a famous author
Later in his life, Jobs crossed paths with his biological sister while seeking the identity of his birth parents. His sister, Mona Simpson (born Mona Jandali), is the well-known author of Anywhere But Here — a story about a mother and daughter that was later adapted into a film starring Natalie Portman and Susan Sarandon.
After reuniting, Jobs and Simpson developed a close relationship. Of his sister, he told a New York Times interviewer: "We're family. She's one of my best friends in the world. I call her and talk to her every couple of days.'' Anywhere But Here is dedicated to "my brother Steve."
Joan Baez
In The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, an unauthorized biography, a friend from Reed reveals that Jobs had a brief fling with folk singer Joan Baez. Baez confirmed the the two were close "briefly," though her romantic connection with Bob Dylan is much better known (Dylan was the Apple icon's favorite musician). The biography also notes that Jobs went out with actress Diane Keaton briefly. 7. His first daughter
When he was 23, Jobs and his high school girlfriend Chris Ann Brennan conceived a daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs. She was born in 1978, just as Apple began picking up steam in the tech world. He and Brennan never married, and Jobs reportedly denied paternity for some time, going as far as stating that he was sterile in court documents. He went on to father three more children with Laurene Powell. After later mending their relationship, Jobs paid for his first daughter's education at Harvard. She graduated in 2000 and now works as a magazine writer.
8. Alternative lifestyle
In a few interviews, Jobs hinted at his early experience with the psychedelic drug LSD. Of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Jobs said: "I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."
The connection has enough weight that Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who first synthesized (and took) LSD, appealed to Jobs for funding for research about the drug's therapeutic use.
In a book interview, Jobs called his experience with the drug "one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life." As Jobs himself has suggested, LSD may have contributed to the "think different" approach that still puts Apple's designs a head above the competition.
Jobs will forever be a visionary, and his personal life also reflects the forward-thinking, alternative approach that vaulted Apple to success. During a trip to India, Jobs visited a well-known ashram and returned to the U.S. as a Zen Buddhist.
Jobs was also a pescetarian who didn't consume most animal products, and didn't eat meat other than fish. A strong believer in Eastern medicine, he sought to treat his own cancer through alternative approaches and specialized diets before reluctantly seeking his first surgery for a cancerous tumor in 2004.
9. His fortune
As the CEO of the world's most valuable brand, Jobs pulled in a comically low annual salary of just $1. While the gesture isn't unheard of in the corporate world — Google's Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt all pocketed the same 100 penny salary annually — Jobs has kept his salary at $1 since 1997, the year he became Apple's lead executive. Of his salary, Jobs joked in 2007: "I get 50 cents a year for showing up, and the other 50 cents is based on my performance."
In early 2011, Jobs owned 5.5 million shares of Apple. After his death, Apple shares were valued at $377.64 — a roughly 43-fold growth in valuation over the last 10 years that shows no signs of slowing down.
He may only have taken in a single dollar per year, but Jobs leaves behind a vast fortune. The largest chunk of that wealth is the roughly $7 billion from the sale of Pixar to Disney in 2006. In 2011, with an estimated net worth of $8.3 billion, he was the 110th richest person in the world, according to Forbes. If Jobs hadn't sold his shares upon leaving Apple in 1985 (before returning to the company in 1996), he would be the world's fifth richest individual.
While there's no word yet on plans for his estate, Jobs leaves behind three children from his marriage to Laurene Jobs (Reed, Erin, and Eve), as well as his first daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs.
Record thin on Steve Jobs’s philanthropy
Unlike fellow tech leaders Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, he did not sign the Giving Pledge, the effort under which the nation’s richest individuals commit to giving at least half their wealth to philanthropy.
From tweeting teenagers to titans of
technology, millions around the world were mourning the passing of Apple
founder Steve Jobs Thursday. (Oct. 6)
And it wasn’t until after an unflattering media report about Jobs on the subject over the summer, that Apple in September initiated a “matching gifts” program, under which donations to philanthropies made by employees are matched by the company.
Now what will happen to Jobs’s fortune — Forbes has estimated his net worth at $8.3 billion — is a matter of speculation that is provoking discussion both about Jobs and the societal obligations of the very rich.
The most recent round of debate began after the New York Times published an unflattering piece in August, stating “there is no public record of Mr. Jobs giving money to charity. . . . Nor is there a hospital wing or an academic building with his name on it.”
Moreover, Jobs had closed Apple’s philanthropic programs when he returned to the company in 1997 and never reinstated them despite $14 billion in profit last year, the Times reported.
“Many other innovative companies have found ways to apply their ingenuity and resources to helping society,” Vincent Stehle, a longtime grantmaker in nonprofit technology circles and a columnist for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, said Thursday. “It was a little disappointing not to see Apple at the table.”
But Jobs supporters note that the bulk of his contributions to society may reside in the quality and innovation of Apple’s products. They also pointed out ways that Jobs and Apple have been charitable.
Bono, U2’s lead singer and a noted activist, quickly responded to the Times piece, writing that “Apple’s contribution to our fight against AIDS in Africa has been invaluable.”
The company had given “tens of millions of dollars that have transformed the lives of more than two million Africans through H.I.V. testing, treatment and counseling. This is serious and significant. And Apple’s involvement has encouraged other companies to step up,” Bono wrote. “Just because he’s been extremely busy, that doesn’t mean that he and his wife, Laurene, have not been thinking about these things.”
Jobs’s supporters say it also may be impossible to know from public records what he gave away because he could have requested anonymity. Indeed, his plans for the rest of his wealth may not be known until well after his death.
The fact that he doesn’t appear on lists of public giving “doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s not giving generously,” said Adriene Davis of Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy, which tracks such gifts.
What may partly explain Jobs’s absence from the donor rolls is that he was so busy with his company.
Jobs’s most direct effort at philanthropy was when he set up the Steven P. Jobs Foundation, shortly after he was forced out of Apple in 1985. To run that effort, he hired Mark Vermilion, who first spent time at Humanitas International, a charity founded by Joan Baez, and then headed Apple’s community efforts, which began when Vermilion proposed the company give away computers to nonprofits.
Jobs wanted his foundation to focus on nutrition and vegetarianism. Vermilion favored programs that promoted social entrepreneurship. But then Jobs got tied up building another company called NeXT and the foundation shut down.
“I said, ‘You really need to spend some time on this’ and he said ‘I can’t right now,’ ” Vermilion said. “I really don’t blame Steve. I think I could have done a better job on selling him on my idea or I should have done his idea.”
Had Jobs, who died at 56, lived longer, he might have gotten around to more public charities, Vermilion said, but because he was a perfectionist, he would have needed to devote a lot of his scarce time to it.
“He’s gotten a lot of criticism for not giving away tons of money,” Vermilion said. “But I think it’s a bum rap. There’s only so many hours in a week, and he created so many incredible products. He really contributed to culture and society.”
