Which McDonald’s logo design replaced the separate arches with an overlapping “M” in 1962?

The Golden Arches logo design replaced the separate arches with an overlapping “M” in 1962.

McDonald’s restaurants originally used two separate yellow arches as architectural features on opposite sides of the building. When the company developed a new corporate mark in 1962, those elements were combined into the recognizable Golden Arches symbol.

The resulting shape resembled the letter M while retaining a direct connection to the restaurant buildings. This gave McDonald’s a logo that could work on signs, packaging, advertising, and other branded materials beyond the physical restaurant.

The change is sometimes described as the creation of the arches themselves, but the arches had already been used in restaurant architecture during the 1950s. The important 1962 development was their transformation into a unified logo. Jim Schindler is credited with designing that modern version, while Stanley Clark Meston designed the earlier building arches.