An offspring of Tendrilis, a biophilic writing system

Talea is born from the ideas of someone who was hypnotized by Tendrilis, a free-hand writing system which involves drawing plant-like sprouts.

Note: the following page describes Talea version 2. For aficionados, the version 1 of Talea is available in this PDF:

Talea v1.pdf

“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita / mi ritrovai per una selva oscura”, using Talea v2

Tendrilis was modified in order to achieve the following:

• Removing the “which is the side up?” effect
• Removing the “where does it start? Which is the direction?” effect
• Introducing some glyph variability and some artistic freedom and possibilities in shaping the sprouts, while maintaining readability and a “fixed standard rule”

Table of contents

How does Talea work: basic principles

In order to write a Talea, you simply have to firstly draw a stem, which is the part where you will draw the glyphs on. The stem can assume any shape: a spiral, an “S”, even a knot.

A root indicates the starting point where the reader will start to read the phrases.

Phrases can be distributed among multiple stems, following the rules further indicated.

Glyphs follow a basic principle: consonants are attached to the stem, while vowels are separated, and placed next to the consonant. The order in which they will be read when one on the top of the other is consonant first.