The Golden Arches are the famous symbol of McDonald's, the global fast-food hamburger chain. Originally real arches that were part of the restaurant design, they were incorporated into the chain's logo in 1962.
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History
The arches were introduced in 1953, when Dick and Mac McDonald were building a new outlet in Phoenix, Arizona. Architect Stanley Meston designed a walk-up hamburger stand with red and white tiles and a distinctive sloped roof, but Dick McDonald, wanting more visual appeal, sketched a pair of stylized yellow arches, one at each side. Mestson accepted other changes but rejected the arches; in the end, sign-maker George Dexter was hired to construct the arches.[1] When viewed from an angle, the design was reminiscent of the letter M. A sign out front incorporated yet a third yellow arch along with the chain's signature character, a chef named Speedee.
In 1962, seeking to upgrade its image, the company sought a new logo. Fred Turner sketched a stylized "V", but the company's head of engineering and design, Jim Schindler, extended the "V" into an "M" resembling a McDonald's store viewed from an angle, with a red isosceles trapezoid "roof" serving as background for lettering.[1]
While McDonald's dropped the physical arches from nearly all of its restaurants in the 1960s, the Golden Arches have remained in the logo, and as a commonly understood term for the company. All McDonald's stores and commercials in Canada have a maple leaf in the middle of the Golden Arches.
They have also been seen more broadly as a symbol of capitalism or globalization, since they are one of the more prominent American corporations that have become global in their reach (along with Coca-Cola and Nike).
The Golden Arches theory
In his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas L. Friedman proposed The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, observing that no two countries with a McDonald's franchise had ever gone to war with one another, a version of the democratic peace theory. Shortly after the book was published, the NATO bombing of Serbia proved the theory wrong, though in a later edition Friedman argued that this exception proved the rule: the war ended quickly, he argued, partly because the Serbian population did not want to lose their place in a global system "symbolised by McDonald's" (Friedman 2000: 252–253). It should be noted that Friedman framed this theory in terms of McDonald's Golden Arches "with tongue slightly in cheek" (Friedman 2005). Recently, Friedman has updated the theory with the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention (Friedman 2005). In 1998, McDonald's host countries India and Pakistan fought a border war over Kashmir. While not a full scale war, both countries flaunted their nuclear capabilities. At least two wars between McDonald's hosting nations have occurred since the NATO bombing of Serbia: the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon; and the 2008 conflict between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia.
See also
References
- Friedman, Thomas. (2000) The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Anchor Books.
- Friedman, Thomas. (2005) The Guardian, 21 April 2005.
- ^ a b Mark Hughes (4 January 2008). "Logos that became legends: Icons from the world of advertising". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/logos-that-became-legends-icons-from-the-world-of-advertising-768077.html. Retrieved 2008-04-27.
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