世
Symbols Life
generation
ㄕˋ shì
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.
One layer of a family, or one era of people. Chinese distinguishes the era, the succession, and the cohort you belong to.
Before you commit
Choose with care世 reads as the world or an age more often than as a generation — 世界 is world, 一生一世 is a whole lifetime. Alone it is very broad.
Pairs well with世世代代, generation after generation, is the phrase for something handed on without a break.
At small sizesFive strokes, wide and flat. Very legible small, though the horizontal shape suits a wide placement more than a vertical one.
Meaning
A generation; an age, an era; the world.
The generation as a span of time, and the first half of 世代.
Other characters for “generation”
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