American Airlines Pin

This is the logo designed in 1967 by Massimo Vignelli, who passed away in 2014 at age 83.  On his company's website is the master's philosophy:  "I like design to be semantically correct, syntactically consistent, and pragmatically understandable.  I like it to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all timeless."  Vignelli refused to design the eagle in the centre.  In a 2013 interview in Bloomberg (in which he was highly critical of American Airline's new logo) he said, "

When we originally designed the logo, I designed without the eagle. They wanted an eagle. I said, “If you want an eagle, it has to have every feather.” You don’t stylize and make a cartoon out of an eagle. Somebody else did the eagle, by the way. 

You didn’t design American’s original eagle between the “AA”? 

I refused to do it. We started without it, and the pilots threatened to go on strike because they wanted the eagle on American Airlines. There’s always been the eagle. But I wanted the eagle to be real. As a matter of fact, the post office eagle, I think, is terrific. If you do an eagle, do an eagle with the dignity of an eagle. Don’t make Mickey Mouse out of an eagle. That was my theory at the time. The office of Henry Dreyfuss did the eagle.

The company that originally made the pin, Stoffel Seals of Tuckahoe, New York, is still in business.  Founded in 1926 as Stoffel and Co. in Horn, Switzerland, Hans Stoffel emigrated to the U.S. in 1940 and started the American company in 1941, primarily making security seals for defense plants.  He later founded Southern Can Company, American Finetool Corporation and, over the years, various companies which distributed Swiss and German production equipment in the United States.  He died in 2003.  The company is now part of the Tydenbrooks global network and operates out of Atlanta, Georgia.