變
Symbols Life
change
ㄅㄧㄢˋ biàn
Two versions of the same picture, and both are free with no account and no watermark. The first has no background at all, which is the one to send your artist — but a phone or computer photo viewer set to dark will show black strokes on dark grey and it can look like nothing downloaded. If that happens, use the second one: identical characters on a plain white background. Either way you get the characters on their own — the square and the faint guide lines you see above are not in the file. Each character is 1000px, so a two-character download is 2000×1000, and the script and layout are the ones you picked.
Script
Characters
Same in both
Layout
Rubbing mode: white on black, as a stone rubbing. The download is unaffected.
Something becoming other than it was. Chinese splits this into abrupt change and gradual transformation, and picks a different character for each.
Before you commit
Choose with care變 leans negative in everyday speech - 變了 said of a person means they changed for the worse. For change you welcome, 化 or 易 reads better.
JapaneseJapanese uses the simplified-style 変 instead. The traditional 變 will read as Chinese or as deliberately old-fashioned to a Japanese eye.
At small sizesTwenty-three strokes, dense across the top. This one needs real size; below a few centimetres it turns into a grey block.
Meaning
To change, alter, become different; often sudden or unwelcome change.
The default word for change in modern Chinese, from weather to circumstances.
Other characters for “change”
What to do next
Pick the script and layout you want above, download the PNG, and send that file to your artist. Ask them to work from the file rather than redrawing the character freehand — that is where strokes go missing.
Related concepts