Who created McDonald's first famous intersecting-arches logo in 1962?

Jim Schindler created McDonald's first famous intersecting-arches logo in 1962.

The design turned the two separate yellow arches used on restaurant buildings into a single graphic mark. Schindler joined the arches so they formed a stylized letter “M,” giving McDonald's a compact symbol that could appear on packaging, signs, advertisements, and other branded materials.

This logo built on Stanley Clark Meston's earlier architectural work. Meston designed the physical arches for the 1952 restaurant prototype, but Schindler's contribution was the graphic interpretation that made the arches function as a corporate identity.

The mark changed in later decades, including versions with a horizontal line and different treatments of the wordmark. Nevertheless, the golden “M” remained the central visual element. The arches' association with McDonald's is why people often call the logo simply the “Golden Arches.”