Stanley Meston created the original McDonald's restaurant building design associated with the Golden Arches.
Meston was an architect whose 1950s design for McDonald's restaurants used large yellow arches as prominent roadside architectural features. The arches made the buildings visible from a distance and gave the growing chain a distinctive physical identity.
The architectural arches later became the basis for the stylized logo developed by Jim Schindler in 1962. This distinction matters: Meston designed the buildings and their visual form, while Schindler turned the paired arches into a graphic emblem.
Ray Kroc is often connected with the arches because he expanded McDonald's into a major franchise network after joining the business. However, Kroc did not create the original architectural design. The arches' branding power came from the combination of roadside visibility, repeated restaurant construction, and later use as a simple corporate mark.