The original arches on Stanley Meston’s first McDonald’s restaurant buildings were yellow.
Architect Stanley Meston designed the distinctive McDonald’s restaurant buildings used in the 1950s. Their large golden-yellow arches were structural and decorative features, designed to make the restaurants visible to passing motorists. The bright color helped the arches stand out against the roadside environment and later gave the company its most important visual symbol.
The arches were not initially created as a logo in the modern graphic-design sense. They were part of the building’s architecture. McDonald’s branding history changed when the two separate arches were combined into a stylized “M” in 1962.
People sometimes remember the arches as simply “golden,” but the original architectural color is more specifically yellow or golden yellow. Red also became strongly associated with McDonald’s through signs and packaging, yet it was not the color of the original arches.