Video cameras in kitchens and a cloth that is thrown away.

Swiffer is a Procter & Gamble brand of floor and dusting tools built around disposable cloths and pads. P&G, based in Cincinnati, launched it in 1999, a date given both by English Wikipedia and by John Colapinto in The New Yorker in October 2011, and the company has owned the name since that launch. Wikipedia says that at first only dry cloths were available and the product was sold simply as “Swiffer,” the cloth being thrown away once it was dirty.

Much of the development story is told through the design consultancy Continuum of Newton, Massachusetts. In a March 2016 profile, The Boston Globe wrote that the staff of Continuum’s founder, Gianfranco Zaccai, had “invented the Swiffer,” and described it as the floor-cleaning tool “with the bright green handle and disposable cloth.” According to the Globe, the product came about after Continuum researchers videotaped people cleaning their homes and saw how much they disliked touching dirty mops. The researchers also concluded that most of the dirt in a home is dust that could be picked up electrostatically, which pointed towards a dry, charged cloth rather than water and a bucket. The Globe listed the Swiffer among many products Continuum had invented, engineered or designed over three decades, alongside work for Pampers, Audi and the Italian confectioner Perugina.

There was also a precedent in Japan. English Wikipedia, citing Advertising Age in April 2000, says the Japanese company Kao released its Quickle Wiper in 1995 and that the Quickle “became the model” for the Swiffer. Citing the Cincinnati Business Courier of November 1999, the same article says P&G did not seek a licensing agreement, and that Kao’s product was licensed in the United States to S. C. Johnson & Son.

A name built from sounds, and a handle that became a platform.

The name came from a naming firm. In his 2011 New Yorker article “Famous Names,” Colapinto reported that Lexicon, the agency run by David Placek, was hired in the mid-1990s to name a new P&G mop that used disposable pads charged with static electricity to pick up dust and crumbs. Placek told his staff to avoid any reference to the word “mop,” which he said evokes drudgery, while still suggesting the act of cleaning and conveying ease and speed. From a list of action words that included “swipe,” “sweep,” “swift” and “fast,” Lexicon isolated sound combinations such as sw, ft and sh and began building names from them.

Lexicon’s linguist Will Leben particularly liked “swiffer.” As the New Yorker reported it, Leben noted that “swiff” is phonologically very close to “sweep” and also sounds like “swift,” suggesting that the job will soon be over, while the “-er” ending marks something that performs an action — implying that the Swiffer, rather than the person holding it, does the work. Colapinto added that P&G now uses the name for an array of cleaning products, and Placek cited Swiffer to his team as an example of a name that works as a platform rather than a single product.

The platform grew in stages. English Wikipedia records wet cloths for the original sweeper from 2001; the Swiffer WetJet, a spray mop that takes its own solution bottle, from 2001, first in Canada; Swiffer Dusters from 2003; a sweeper with a small vacuum, Sweep + Vac, from 2004; and Sweep and Trap from 2013. In August 2018 the Cincinnati Business Courier reported a Swiffer air cleaner that, Wikipedia notes, is made and marketed by a P&G licensee, Project Air LLC of Cranbury, New Jersey. A co-branded steam mop, the Swiffer Bissell SteamBoost, carries the name of the floor-care maker Bissell beside Swiffer’s. Wikipedia describes the arrangement across the range as a “razor-and-blades” model, in which the handle is bought once and the cloths, pads and refills are bought again and again.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group all make products for cleaning the home: sprays, powders, liquids, wipes and the tools that carry them. Household-cleaning brands sit in a crowded aisle, and a single name can cover dozens of formats, from a trigger bottle by the sink to a refill pack bought in bulk, so the identity has to hold together across very different objects.

On the shelf, much of that identity is carried by shape and colour before any word is read: the profile of a bottle or tub, the colour of the liquid seen through it, a cap or trigger in a set hue, and a logo placed in the same spot on every pack. Some brands lean on a character or mascot in their advertising; others rely on a coined name or a single strong colour.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who started the brand, who owns it now, and how its packs, logos and advertising have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A green handle, a coined verb-like name and a jilted mop.

Swiffer’s look starts with the tool itself. When The Boston Globe wanted to identify the product in a single phrase in 2016, it reached for the bright green handle and the disposable cloth. The product names follow one pattern: Swiffer first, then the tool — Sweeper, WetJet, Duster — so each new device and its refills sit under the same word.

The name does much of the work. Because Lexicon built it from the sounds of “sweep” and “swift” and gave it an agent-like “-er” ending, the word sits easily in front of any tool P&G adds, from a duster to an air cleaner, and the range has moved from floors to dusting and, through a licensee, to an air cleaner under the same name.

The advertising has leaned on humour about the tools Swiffer replaces. English Wikipedia describes television commercials in which a woman switches to a Swiffer while her old mop, broom or feather duster — given a personality of its own — is left behind, and later spots in which the jilted tool moves on to a new partner, such as a bowling ball, a rake or an antique doll. An announcer, voiced by Blaze Berdahl, tells viewers that if they switch to Swiffer they will dump their old mop, broom or duster, but not to worry, because he will find someone else. Wikipedia lists 1970s and 1980s pop songs used under these spots, among them Devo’s “Whip It” and the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me.”

For a design guide, Swiffer shows how a coined name, a recognisable handle colour and a running joke in the advertising can hold a growing family of refills together. Compare it with Clorox, whose ReadyMop the New Yorker mentioned as a rival product in 2011, and Scrubbing Bubbles, another American household-cleaning brand. For this guide we use handle green, deep green and cloth white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Swiffer’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.