Who designed the Golden Arches used in McDonald’s first restaurant redesign in 1952?

Stanley Clark Meston designed the Golden Arches for McDonald’s first major restaurant redesign in 1952.

The brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald asked Meston to create a highly visible building for their San Bernardino, California, drive-in. Meston worked with draftsman Charles Fish, and the resulting structure used two large yellow arches on opposite sides of the building. When viewed from an angle, the arches formed a distinctive architectural frame.

The arches were initially part of the restaurant building rather than a standalone corporate logo. Their bright color and exaggerated shape helped motorists recognize the drive-in from the road, an important advantage in the car-oriented restaurant market of the 1950s.

McDonald’s later turned the architectural motif into its familiar symbol. Jim Schindler combined the arches into the logo adopted in the 1960s, so Meston and Schindler are associated with different stages of the design’s history.