Who designed the original pair of architectural arches used on McDonald's restaurants in the 1950s?

Stanley Clark Meston designed the original pair of architectural arches used on McDonald's restaurants in the 1950s.

Meston was an architect whose work for McDonald's helped create the distinctive roadside restaurant form associated with the expanding chain. The arches were physical structures placed at the sides of restaurant buildings, where their bright color and height made them visible to motorists.

The design was part architecture and part advertising. Before the modern logo existed, the arches worked as a large-scale sign that made individual restaurants recognizable from a distance. Their shape later supplied the visual material for the corporate Golden Arches symbol.

Jim Schindler is often credited in answers about the logo because he created the later M-shaped mark in 1962. That is a different contribution. Meston designed the original architectural arches; Schindler converted the idea into the modern logo.