Ever since opening, McDonald’s has provided the public with the iconic usage of the Golden Arches. Recently though, not all countries and restaurants have been using this vibrant red and yellow palette and have melded into a rainbow of colors throughout the world. To combat this, the McDonald’s Franchise has turned to the advertising firm Turner Duckworth, who plan to revert back to the roots and go for a simpler approach. This simpler approach consists of using solely red and yellow, but instead of having the “aggressive red” as the highlight, they have started to use the golden yellow as the highlight and slightly accent this with the original red. For the future, McDonald’s is moving forward towards a “feel-good” visual with simplistic patterns.
Personally, I am a big fan of yellow and am totally for this transition. Even though I eat McDonald’s very rarely, I do appreciate aesthetically pleasing art and this is surely all that. Quoting Tyler Brooks, the lead design director of Turner Duckworth, “It was about clearing off the barnacles, we wanted to go back to the basics.” Putting their own twist on it, they definitely went back to the basics to provide the public with feelings of enjoyment as yellow clearly sparks joy in people on sight.
McDonald’s also went ahead and are embracing the fact of irregularity in all of their products and are equating the “flawesome” products to humans due to all of us being flawed. This may be a little to deep for me, but I do appreciate the fact of brands straying away from always being perfect, which is not the case at all when it comes to reality. With this being said, they released a series of visually pleasing ads showing the imperfections of their products through animation and conveying how nothing should be “perfect” when it comes to the visuals of food, that’s what makes it delicious. In conclusion, I still will not eat McDonald’s on the regular simply due to a change in advertising style, but I will appreciate the visuals I see all over their ads.
Diaz, A. (2019, July 18). Inside the new visual identity being served up at McDonald’s. Retrieved from https://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/inside-new-visual-identity-being-served-mcdonalds/2183141