Stanley Meston designed the original McDonald’s restaurant arches used before the logo was created.
Meston was an architect who worked with the McDonald brothers on the design of their new restaurant buildings in the 1950s. The buildings featured large yellow arches on each side, making the restaurants visible from the road and giving them a distinctive silhouette.
The arches were originally physical parts of the architecture, not merely graphic marks. Their height and bright color helped the restaurants stand out in the roadside environment of postwar America, where drive-in dining competed for motorists’ attention.
The architectural arches later became the basis for the corporate logo. Jim Schindler combined the forms into the golden “M” introduced in 1962. This history explains why the symbol is called the Golden Arches even when it appears only in print or on packaging.