Who redesigned McDonald’s logo into the familiar single-letter M form in 1962?

Jim Schindler redesigned McDonald’s logo into the familiar single-letter M form in 1962.

Schindler was McDonald’s head of construction and engineering, and he combined the restaurant’s two architectural arches into a unified graphic mark. The resulting design turned a building feature into a compact symbol that could work on signs, packaging, and advertising.

The arches had already appeared in McDonald’s restaurant architecture during the 1950s. Their transformation into a graphic logo helped create a consistent identity as the company expanded through franchising and increasingly needed recognizable signs beyond a single restaurant’s building.

Ray Kroc is often credited with making McDonald’s a national and international business, but he did not personally draw this logo. Another common confusion is treating the original paired architectural arches and the later M-shaped logo as exactly the same design; they are related stages in the brand’s visual history.