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A friend once paraphrased Pablo Picasso as saying that a picture or painting consists of a series of destructions. After a little reflection, the quote appears to grow in profoundness. In many respects the observation summarises the essence of the artistic creative process.

In oil painting, an image is painstakingly synthesised by forming a subject that undergoes selective obliteration by overlaying fresh pigment to achieve a desired result: a sort of additive modification occurs.

With other media, the construction of an image evolves through the erasure (destruction) of tentative sketching and replacement by more considered brush or pencil strokes: a kind of subtractive modification takes place.

Parallel procedures can be discerned in literary and publishing activities. Once an original text has been drafted, the author and editors often revise the material with the purpose of refinement. ‘Pull a revise’ is a term that I recollect from long ago when instructed to correct or alter a text and to produce a revise proof for approval or, to borrow the word from Picasso, further destruction.

Settling on typographic and graphic arrangements ready for print production depends on analogous routines of destruction. Page or job layouts are created and progressively amended until the designer reaches satisfaction. Empirical testing of designs is more easily accomplished nowadays with the assistance of computers, as opposed to the traditional methods of drawing visualisations on paper.

Some designers have acquired reputations for being excessively pernickety at the
proofing stage, such as Sir Francis Meynell. He described himself as a ‘Fidgeter of Types’ in a book inscription for George W Jones. Meynell was known for endless revisions to typographic compositions, especially title pages.

Lawrence Wallis held international pre-press marketing positions and was a respected author and print historian.