Stanley Meston designed the original McDonald's restaurant buildings featuring tall yellow arches.
Meston worked with McDonald's founders Richard and Maurice McDonald on a design intended to make the restaurants highly visible from passing traffic. The buildings used large yellow arches as architectural elements, creating a bold roadside profile that distinguished McDonald's from nearby businesses.
Those arches were initially part of the building rather than a standalone logo. Their visual power eventually led McDonald's to combine them into the Golden Arches emblem, which became the company's most recognizable branding device.
Stanley Meston is sometimes confused with Jim Schindler. Meston designed the early restaurant architecture; Schindler later combined the two arches into the logo used from 1962. Ray Kroc, meanwhile, was central to the chain's expansion but was not the architect of the original buildings.