McDonald’s introduced the “McDonald’s” wordmark beneath its Golden Arches in a major logo redesign in 1968.
The redesign combined the familiar yellow arches with the company name, creating a more complete corporate identity for signs, packaging, and advertising. The arches had already become associated with McDonald’s restaurants, but adding the wordmark made the brand easier to identify wherever the symbol appeared.
The 1968 version is often described as the first major change after the arches became the company’s central logo. Later versions adjusted the proportions, colors, and relationship between the arches and the name, but the basic combination remained influential for decades.
People sometimes date the familiar logo entirely to 1962, when Jim Schindler created the interlocking arches design. That earlier milestone concerns the arches themselves; the 1968 redesign concerns the prominent combination of the arches with the McDonald’s name.