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Every now and then graphic designer Adam Gracia will disagree with a client about style, and things turn so heated he ends up writing a letter of apology.

He even ticked off the architect for Hello Sushi who wanted gold walls--Gracia insisted on process magenta.

It's not that the 25-year-old founder and creative director of Oktoberproject is a jerk. Far from it--actually he's quite affable. But unwavering artistic conviction can rub people the wrong way in Baton Rouge, where modern design seems to cling perilously to an aesthetic seesaw that confounds as often as it captivates.

Gracia and web developer Keith Parent feel the same us-vs.-them conflict working between progressive Baton Rouge firms and more traditional ones. It's as though opposing forces are pitched in a designer's cold war, screaming out from every billboard, print ad, menu, home page, logo and concert poster. It's a strategic siege to capture the look and intangible feel of a city in flux.

What colors should Baton Rouge be?

Oktoberproject began as a larger collective of LSU artists, but Gracia says a year of necessary pro bono work weeded out those who took the design firm less seriously. He describes the group's first few years as "under the radar and still in business."

The firm is starting to make its mark, and Oktoberproject brand identities are turning heads. There's the vibrant J-pop techno mash-up for Hello Sushi, or the homely tones of a 1970s dinner table for The Supper Studio.

Surprisingly, it is Bauhaus typographer Jan Tschichold and the clean lines of Swiss design that inform their work the most. The Supper Studio's color bands may tap into pure retro Americana, but the sans serif text is straight Swiss. The Oktoberproject logo itself is a reference to the Swiss cross, only cut up and maneuvered into an arrow pointing forward.

"The Swiss designers were locked up in the Alps and didn't have great access to inks," Gracia says. "So they learned to develop paper as a color. And that's what we do with all of our designs--make white a color."

The Beatles did it with the stark cover of their eponymous 1968 release, and who is going to question them? As the web site for Timeless Designs attests, Oktoberproject has never shied away from white space. But more than that, one can draw an analogy between the local designers and their European heroes. If Gracia and Parent were a Swiss collective, Baton Rouge's conservative view of design would be their Alps, an obstacle only surmounted by the double-edged sword of simplicity and daring.

These two qualities are essential for an effective logo, Gracia says. The Oktoberproject principals prove adept at analyzing the effects a symbol's form and color have on it. This is their small talk. For the record, Parent's Gracia especially is not afraid to speak his mind. He finds particularly annoying the amateur designers who--armed with Photoshop and Microsoft Word--have launched thousands of hideous and unimaginative ads. "Typesetters" he calls them.

He also wants to strike the overused starburst shape from Baton Rouge's palette. CC's Coffee House and others rely too heavily on the starburst to add background depth to their design, he says.

"Red, white and black is kind of a cheap trick, too," Gracia says in frustration. "Those are the three boldest colors in the spectrum, and they always look good together. You could put the word 'pooh' in red on a black background with white dots behind it, and it would look good."

Oktoberproject even approached The Lava Room about designing a new logo for downtown's famously red, white and black tapas bar. They were rebuffed.

But it was this instinct to forge a new direction that caught the attention of Hello Sushi owner Angela Finch. She allowed Gracia and Parent to push their work beyond the two dimensions of print ads and web pages and into the restaurant space itself. Together with photographer Kevin Duffey and architect Melissa Deshotels, they created a bold environment that envelops the patron at every turn.

"I wanted to take away the preconceptions about sushi and use more the image of youth in modern day Japan," says Finch.

She wanted J-pop (Japanese pop) but also something new. In response Oktoberproject created Johnny and Gogo, a hipster duo to reflect the restaurant's lively atmosphere as evolving personas, not Asian-specific caricatures or anime copycats. They even shot and edited videos that loop on three screens video screens.

A simple comma placed at the end of Hello Sushi in print ads is a tiny gesture that heralds a massively forward-thinking design for the restaurant, one that is constantly evolving. Gracia already is working on a makeover for Johnny and Gogo and on new video footage. The Parent-designed web site features a custom video game that soon will be tied in with discounts: All those hours spent zonked out with Mario and Luigi may earn you a deal on dinner.

The review of Hello Sushi in LSU's student newspaper The Reveille dubbed the menu and décor overkill. If the contrasting palette, Rauschenberg-inspired wall art and meditative video displays are trying too hard, at least Oktoberproject tried.

And that is Gracia's mission: to make graphic design a more prominent aspect of local business, even to the point of it becoming an economic motivator.

"The value of design is that it shows you care about your business," Gracia says. "I hate to call them clients. We're partners--in it together."

Gracia is gregarious when Parent is contemplative, and he likes to play up their firm's youth. It takes a child's mentality to stare with wonder at things others look on with indifference; but as progressives, Gracia and Parent are steeped in intellectual design theory and a rebel's eye for bending the rules.

Parent wants Oktoberproject designs to evoke strong feelings and to create what his partner calls a "subconscious certificate of approval."

If Oktoberproject is child-like, it is only because their work is honest and imaginative.

"I've turned down so many projects because I didn't want to do it for the money," Gracia says. "I'd rather fight and struggle and not eat for a month and have all of our work be unique. We want to be proud of our entire portfolio."

And for that he does not apologize.