McDonald’s adopted the familiar M-shaped Golden Arches logo in 1962.
The logo was created by combining the two arches that had first appeared as architectural features on McDonald’s restaurants. Jim Schindler developed the graphic version, turning the separate arches into a single stylized mark that could work on signs and other brand materials.
The 1962 logo was more than a picture of a building. It transformed a recognizable restaurant feature into a compact corporate symbol, helping customers identify McDonald’s locations even when the full building design was not visible.
The logo’s introduction is often confused with the first use of the arches themselves. The arches appeared architecturally in 1953, but the combined M-shaped logo belongs to 1962.