HK design student says Jobs tribute not original

Hong Kong design student Jonathan Mak is seen in Hong Kong in this October 6, 2011 file photo. Mak's tribute to Steve Jobs that generated a buzz in cyberspace following the death of the co-founder of Apple last week is not original, the teenager said on Monday.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - A Hong Kong design student's tribute to Steve Jobs that generated a buzz in cyberspace following the death of the co-founder of Apple last week is not original, the teen-ager said Monday.

Jonathan Mak, 19, said he was not the first to come up with the design that fits Jobs' silhouette into the bite of the Apple logo. He was speaking after comments surfaced on Twitter that a U.K.-based designer, known as Raid71 on the web, created the original design in May.

The design posted by Mak on the Internet spread like wildfire in cyberspace Thursday, just after the passing of Jobs.

It drew hundreds of thousands of posts, and commemorative caps and T-shirts peddled on eBay featured his design. The logo was even used by Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher as his Twitter profile picture.

Mak, a student at Hong Kong's Polytechnic University School of Design, acknowledged he was not the original creator of the design but said he did not "rip off" the UK designer.

"I still arrived at the solution on my own, and my conscience is still clear, but I'm more than happy to acknowledge the fact that somebody did it before me," Mak told Reuters.

Like Mak's design, the UK-based designer fits Jobs' silhouette into the bite of the Apple logo. But the dimensions and proportions of that design differ from Mak's logo.

Jobs, who created revolutionary products and reshaped the way the world approaches computing and personal communications, died Wednesday at the age of 56.

(Reporting by Sisi Tang; editing by Charlie Zhu and Raju Gopalakrishnan)