Who designed the original McDonald’s restaurant buildings with their famous yellow arches?

Stanley Clark Meston designed the original McDonald’s restaurant buildings with their famous yellow arches.

Meston was an architect whose design work helped give early McDonald’s restaurants a distinctive roadside appearance. The arches rose above the buildings as large yellow structural and decorative elements, making the restaurants easier to recognize from passing roads.

The architectural arches later inspired McDonald’s corporate logo. In 1962, Jim Schindler combined the two arches into the familiar joined “M” symbol, so the building design and the later logo are closely related but not identical.

A common mix-up is assigning the logo design to Meston. Meston is linked to the restaurant architecture, whereas Schindler is credited with turning the arches into the unified logo.