What name did McDonald’s give its famous yellow restaurant symbols?

McDonald’s calls its famous yellow restaurant symbols the Golden Arches. They became one of the world’s most recognizable corporate design elements.

The arches began as architectural features on McDonald’s restaurants in the 1950s. Architect Stanley Clark Meston designed curved yellow arches for the restaurant buildings, making them visible to motorists from a distance. The shapes were later combined into the stylized M used in McDonald’s corporate identity.

The arches are often mistaken for merely decorative building parts, but they became a central branding device. Their color, repeated form, and roadside visibility helped customers identify McDonald’s before they could read a sign. The Golden Arches also gave the company a visual symbol that could work across languages and national markets.