McDonald’s (1962)
by Jim Schnidler
‘The Golden Arches’ Is one of the most recognisable and ubiquitous logo’s in the world. I truly released this when travelling around Thailand and Vietnam last summer, walking through the bustling streets filled with fantastic street food and the amazing smells of Asian cuisine. Then I saw it. ‘The Golden Arches’ a glimmering beacon of hope for westerners, and I couldn’t believe how busy it was with all the traditional Vietnamese restaurants around left empty. At this point I started understanding how important the use of symbols are for the company as it allows McDonald’s to communicate with everyone, especially in a place like Asia where the English language is scarce. I would go as far to say that the McDonald’s logo isn’t far off from becoming a universal symbol like a stop sign or traffic lights.
The McDonald brothers Richard and Maurice opened up the first of many McDonald’s in 1940, however at this time it went by the name of ‘Speedee Service System’ and instead of having the lovable, yet slightly terrifying clown mascot ‘Ronald McDonald’ they thought they could get the fast food message across with the appropriately named Speedee(the winking chef).
The infamous Golden arches logo was actually first thought of in 1952, which was around the time the first McDonald’s building was open. Adapted from a sketch, done by one of the brothers of two half circles, sign maker - George Dexter was brought in and designed the two yellow arches which went on the side of the building and from a certain angle formed the letter ‘M’. However this didn’t spring into action until 1961 when McDonald’s was bought by Ray Kroc.
Under Ray Kroc’s leadership of the company the iconic logo was born. This was when designer Jim Schindler sketched the yellow ‘M’ with slanted line interlocking through it, representing the roof of the building. It wasn’t until 1968 when the logo was released with the line through the ‘M’ as Jim Schindler intended.
The McDonald’s logo works really well in my opinion, the yellow arches having connotations of being French fries which when arched over one another create the ‘M’. I also think Jim Schindler’s idea of incorporating the the natural design of the buildings architecture into the design gives it a nice personal touch from the McDonald's brothers. I think the colour selection was effective and well researched by Jim Schindler since psychologically for humans red and yellow put together makes you hungry, therefore an effective choice by him for a fast food restaurant. It could be said that by choosing those colours Jim Schindler played a big part in the companies fame, but also by him creating such a recognisable logo for this company he actually made something that when people think of McDonald’s they will immediately associate that with the logo, which in turn is what they will look for when trying to track one down. Furthermore, according to the International Olympic Committee, the McDonald’s logo is more recognised in the world than the Christian Cross!
For myself I find this logo to be a lot more familiar than the earlier one by Jim Schindler. Created in 2003 by Heye and GMBH, this logo was launched and the catchy slogan “i’m lovin’ it” took off, sadly becoming the most successful advertising campaign in McDonald’s History. I say ‘sadly’ because after viewing the design by Jim Schindler I can’t believe they chose to replace it with this. Schindler put so much more thought and personal meaning into his design at a time when design didn’t even have as much of an impact on the world as it does today. The 2003 rendition to me looks boring compared to his work. Don’t get me wrong I do still like the design and it turned out very successful as an advertising campaign, to the point that whenever I hear whistles slowly moving up the pentatonic scale I think of McDonald’s. However in terms of design I would much rather they kept more aspects of ‘the Schindler design’ instead of scrapping his work and creating something quite dull in comparison.
