Which designer created McDonald’s early arch-shaped restaurant buildings?

Stanley Meston created McDonald’s early arch-shaped restaurant buildings.

Meston was an architect associated with the restaurant design that used large yellow arches on either side of the building. The arches were intended to make the restaurants highly visible and distinctive, especially to motorists approaching along major roads.

This architectural feature later became the source of McDonald’s most famous brand symbol. The physical arches were not initially conceived simply as a letter M; their later logo meaning developed when the company transformed the paired forms into a unified emblem.

The early buildings therefore connect McDonald’s architecture with its graphic identity. Jim Schindler is associated with the modern logo created in 1962, while Meston is associated with the earlier restaurant architecture. Those two contributions are often incorrectly credited to the same person.