“A Hong Kong design student’s poignant tribute to Apple founder Steve Jobs became an internet hit Thursday with its minimalist, touching symbolism and brought a job offer and a flood of commemorative merchandise using his design,” James Pomfret and Sisi Tang report for Reuters.
“Nineteen-year-old Jonathan Mak, a student at Hong Kong’s Polytechnic University School of Design, came up with the idea of incorporating Steve Jobs’ silhouette into the bite of the Apple logo, symbolizing both Jobs’ departure and lingering presence at the core of the company,” Pomfret and Tang report. “The design spread like wildfire in cyberspace, drawing hundreds of thousands of posts, and even commemorative caps and T-shirts peddled on eBay featuring his design.”
“‘Originally, I was going to put a black modified logo against a white background,’ said the bespectacled Mak who paid tribute to Jobs at Hong Kong’s Apple store,” Pomfret and Tang report. “‘It just didn’t feel somber enough. I just wanted it to be a very quiet commemoration. It’s just this quiet realization that Apple is now missing a piece. It’s just kind of implying his absence.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Should Apple replace the company logo with this one? Vote in our poll on our main site near the top of the left column and let us know why below.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Terrance” for the heads up.]
Although I will print and frame it, and hang it on my wall……
NO. It’s not what Steve would do.
Absolutely not.
Steve always wanted forward thinking. Not hanging onto the past. It would fly against everything he stood for.
It’s a beautiful wordless tribute symbol for the week. But that is enough for it.
I think it should be a Think Different Poster that the public can purchase. It sums up how I feel and would like to have a copy to hang in my office.
A nice touch, but not something Steve would want. Nice wares for fans though.
No.
How about using the orginal colored version for awhile 🙂 miss u Steve !!!
No.
No.
I don’t like Steve looking down.
Make the profile either looking straight or up – forward or higher.
Apple never looks down or back.
No, but this will become the wallpaper on my iPhone going forward
It does beg us to imagine how we’ll see Apple in a year or five.
One wonders if Steve hasn’t built some Hari Seldon (Issac Asimov’s Foundation) device to come back at points in the future; give us guidance at crucial nexuses.
I’d say no but I think that should go up on the apple store. It would most likely go on back order asap
I voted YES…but…..yeah it would be kind of strange and a little creepy as years go by.
Other successful logo’s that use their founders as part of the logo would be KFC, Wendy’s. However with a high tech company it doesn’t kind of “rhyme”.
I’d be open to some products having a commemorative kind of theme for a limited time though. For example I just ordered today a NANO with the inscription “Steve Jobs, 1955-Forever”. I’ll be wearing that as a watch. Also ordered 2 iPhone 4s’s and a bunch of other accessories….total value over $2K.
Apple is the brand. Steve Jobs would have rejected it out of hand because it is all about the brand. I was for a good number of years an Apple VAR and there were strict rules in place to protect the band and only portray it in the appropriate light and space.
Steve will be certainly be missed but he was but one person on the team at Apple. I am certain that Apple, having benefited greatly from Steve’s vision and inspiration, will continue.
I have no doubt that Steve had done much to prepare Tim Cook, Phil Schiller and the rest of the management, development, and design teams for the transition.
I think it’s appropriate for some per-determined mourning period, as a permanent change however, I don’t believer that’s not what Steve would have wanted. (BTW, how the hell would I know, I never met the man, but that’s my opinion)
Remember his Stanford speech, “death is natures change agent, out with the old and in with the new”. I’m quite certain he doesn’t want Apple looking backward in any way.
Awesome job!
I skeptical until I saw it!
Very classy. I think they should run a limited run of products with the logo, if not switch to it entirely.
I was skeptical until I saw it, but this is very classy!
Awesome job.
I think they should at the very least use the design in some capacity.
Perhaps if they released it as a poster or t-shirt with proceeds going to cancer research otherwise no.
All the ‘NOs’ make cogent points. A ‘Yes’ would reinforce the corporate need to keep alive Steve’s vision, values, and strategy, as symbolized by his looking down…as in a deep thoughtful moment.
Maybe it could find its way into Apple University – since that was all about how to recreate Steve Jobs’ creativity and vision for a whole new generation of Apple executives (and how knows? Maybe other companies as well)
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It bothers me that he looks sad. If another one could be done where he didn’t look sad, that would be fine, but too hard to pull off in all the instances where the logo was really small. Steve would *hate* that.
No.
1) Steve would want Apple to be more than just him
2) Apple wants to be Apple for ever with of without Steve
3) Although a fun logo, Steve would never approve from a design stand point
4) It is not a good logo
It would make a great tribute T-shirt for a man that accomplished so much.
I think jobs would be looking up rather than down.
Awesome work! Simple and elegant. But cannot be a logo. It is impossible to etch this on devices.
Hey, I’m proud of you guys. Chalk me up as another No.
There should be a one of ‘Mac’ produced with this logo etched upon it’s case as a special tribute to Steve the legend. It would sell big time!
Steve was not a byte.
The idea is someone (Apple founders and users perhaps) has take a bite of Apple (Biblical or Snow-Whitey), defying authority for self-awareness and knowledge to betide. Steve is one of the enlightened ones to have taken the bite with humanity, not the bite itself.
Hell ya. It seems fitting.