Literate Design in the Discourses of Revolution, Reform, and Transition

In contemporary China, including Hong Kong, literate design from the choice of writing system or romanization to presentational formats articulates an inter-discursivity among three major discourses: the language reforms of the post-Liberation revolutionary discourse, the Dengist reform discourse, and the discourse of the transition of sovereignty of Hong Kong from Britain to China. Thus literate design represents the polyvocality of utterance in the public discourse of signs, announcements, and advertisements, symbolizing the new wine of reform by placing it in the old bottle of the symbols of the revolutionary discourse. There is also a smaller contrasting trend of re-symbolizing the revolutionary discourse with the designs of the reform discourse.