mullion is a window cleaning identity with a window inside the name. The two l letters are the mullions, the upright bars that divide a window, and the space between them is filled with a pane of sky blue glass crossed by a single white glint.
A name that is already a window
A mullion is the vertical bar between two panes of glass, the part of a window frame people look past every day without naming it. For a window cleaner it is a gift of a name: the trade's own vocabulary, short, and with a double l that looks like two uprights in a frame. We did not need to add a picture of a house, a bucket or a ladder. We only needed to put glass between the two letters that were already there.
The glint does the rest. A single bright diagonal across a pane is how everyone draws clean glass, from children's drawings to shop window decals, so the mark tells you the glass is clean without saying so.
How the mark is built
The two l letters are drawn as plain, square-ended uprights the same weight as every other stem in the word, so they read as letters first and as window bars second. The gap between them was widened from normal letter spacing to the width of a pane, and the pane fills that gap from the baseline to the top of the l letters, so the glass sits exactly inside its frame.
The glint is a straight diagonal band rising from left to right, cut at a shallow angle and placed just below the middle of the pane, where light usually catches on real glass. It is a separate shape, so it changes colour with the ground: white on the full colour logo, navy on the reversed version, where white uprights frame the blue pane and a navy streak gives the same reading of light on glass.
Lifted out of the word, the two uprights and their pane make the icon: a nearly square window, navy bars either side of sky glass with one glint across it. It works as a favicon, a profile picture or a small sticker on a customer's back gate, and it never needs the full name beside it to make sense.
Type with even uprights
The wordmark is customised Mona Sans Wide Black in lowercase. Lowercase gives the word its run of uprights, the m, u, l, l, i and n are almost all vertical strokes, so the whole name looks like a row of window bars with the pane as the one opening. The wide, heavy cut makes the word easy to read on an A-board or a sign by the gate, and WINDOW CLEANING sits beneath in spaced capitals across the full width.
Navy, sky glass and mist
Deep navy is the working colour: letters, uniforms and the backs of print. Sky glass is a clear, bright blue kept almost entirely for the pane, so wherever the accent appears it reads as glass. Mist is a pale blue paper tone for the backs of cards and large light grounds, and white is kept for the glint and for paper.
Every layout comes in full colour, reversed for navy grounds and in one colour. In one colour the pane and glint drop out, so the space between the uprights becomes clear glass in its own right.
A uniform that answers the door
Window cleaners work around people's homes, often while they are out, so the uniform has to say who they are from the end of a garden. The stacked lockup sits on a navy tee in white with the sky glass pane kept, small on the chest, and the icon alone can go on the back where neighbours see it.
Business cards with a window in them
The card front is navy, with the wordmark reversed on the left and the pane icon large on the right, like a window seen across the street. The back is mist, with the services and number on the left and a navy frame on the right divided into six panes. Five are pale and one is sky glass with the glint, as if one pane has just been cleaned.
A letter for the round
Window cleaning runs on rounds, so the letterhead is set out as the letter a new customer receives: the logo, the number, a heading about their visits and a few short paragraphs on what happens. Along the foot of the page runs a navy frame of six panes with one in sky glass, the same device as the card. The DL envelope carries the full colour logo on white with a sky glass edge.
Posts that look like glass
The social set moves through navy, mist and sky glass. The first post is a four-pane window with one glint and a short promise beneath it. The second lists what every visit includes, each line marked with a navy upright. The third answers the practical question people ask before they sign up, whether they need to be home, in plain words set large.
Questions about this project
Why does the glint turn navy on the reversed logo?
On a navy ground the uprights turn white, and a white glint would merge with them. A navy streak across the blue pane reads just as clearly as light on glass and keeps the two uprights as the brightest parts of the mark.
Does the mark still work without the blue?
Yes. In one colour the pane and the glint drop out, leaving the two uprights with open space between them. The gap itself becomes the glass, which is how a clean window looks anyway.
Why lowercase?
The lowercase word is a row of uprights, so the two l letters sit naturally as window bars among the m, u, i and n. In capitals the letters vary more in shape and the window would be harder to see.
Logo, colours, typography and guidelines, with business cards to match from £59, so every piece looks like the same business.
