Who created the original McDonald’s restaurant design with the famous yellow arches?

Stanley Meston created the original McDonald’s restaurant design with the famous yellow arches.

Meston was an architect hired to develop the McDonald brothers’ new restaurant building in San Bernardino, California. The design used two large yellow arches on opposite sides of the building, making the restaurant visible from the road and giving it a distinctive roadside identity.

The building arches later became the basis for the corporate Golden Arches symbol, but Meston did not design the later combined logo. Jim Schindler transformed the architectural idea into the familiar single “M” mark in 1962. This distinction explains why both names appear in histories of McDonald’s visual branding.