McDonald's combined its two Golden Arches into the recognizable “M” logo in 1962.
The arches had originally been architectural features on McDonald's restaurant buildings. In 1962, the company adopted a logo that joined the two arches into a stylized letter M, making the architectural idea usable as a compact corporate symbol. The design is associated with Jim Schindler, who worked on McDonald's visual identity.
The logo did not instantly look exactly like every modern version. McDonald's revised its wordmark, colors, and presentation over the following decades, including versions that paired the arches with the company name and later versions that used the arches alone. The arches' role as a logo is therefore different from their earlier role as building decoration. Another common mix-up is dating the logo to the 1950s simply because the first restaurant arches appeared then; the combined M belongs to the 1962 identity change.