The Periscope logo is built around a stylized depiction of a periscope and includes an “eye” metaphor, symbolizing a person looking through the device.
The app’s original authors are Kayvon Beykpour and Joe Bernstein. While Beykpour was spending time in Turkey, protests broke out in Taksim Square. He needed to see a live video streaming from the square, but could not do it. His favorite social media, Twitter, could only help with live “text streaming.”
So, Beykpour and Bernstein decided to create an app that could be useful in this situation. The company established in early 2014 was named Bounty. The app authors managed to raise a million and a half from several investors, including Google Ventures and Stanford – StartX. In early 2015, the founders sold it to Twitter.
As soon as in summer 2015, the number of accounts exceeded 10 million. One of the milestones for the app was when some of its features were built into the regular Twitter app in 2016.
The somewhat unusual part of the deal was that the app was sold before it was actually launched. The details have not been made public, which leaves ample room for speculation.
According to some sources, Twitter paid between $75 and $100 million, another source just mentions that the sum exceeded $50 million. However, one more source claimed that the amount of money the Periscope owners received was not that impressive at all.
The logo is based on a drop shape. What makes it different from a regular depiction of a drop is that it is turned upside down. Inside the white drop, there is a red dot looking somewhat similar to the pupil of a human eye. The resemblance is emphasized by one more dot (white), which is placed inside the red one. The drop design is given against the light blue background.
In addition to the emblem mentioned above, you can also come across a more complex emblem, where the “eye” effect is more pronounced due to an additional circle inside the drop.
Here, the drop itself is blue, while the bigger circle is white. In the center of the white circle, there is a smaller red circle. And there is also a small white circle overlapping the border in its top left part.
Simple and unassuming, the type is perfectly legible. To achieve excellent legibility, though, the designer had to sacrifice uniqueness, so the font does not really make the wordmark recognizable.
And yet, the roundish letters fit perfectly the shape of the emblem, with its drop and circles.
In addition to white, the Periscope logo features light blue and red. The shade of blue can be defined as Hex: #3FA4C4 and RGB (63, 164, 196), while the shade of red seems close to the Hex color: #DB5248 and RGB (219, 82, 72). Typically, the “drop” is white; the dot inside it is red, while the background is blue.
Other versions are sometimes used. For instance, blue can be seen instead of red, or the image can be black-and-white. In the earlier version, orange was used instead of red. Also, an orange-and-white icon was available.