長
Symbols Life
growth
ㄓㄤˇ zhǎng
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.
Getting bigger, older or better. Chinese uses one character for physical growing and another for being brought up and cultivated.
Before you commit
Choose with care長 has two readings. As cháng it means long, as zhǎng it means grow, and the written character alone gives no hint. Many readers will see long first.
Pairs well with成長 for the personal sense, 生長 for the biological one. Either removes the ambiguity that 長 on its own carries.
At small sizesEight strokes with long sweeping diagonals. Holds up well small, and the diagonals suit a curved placement like a forearm.
Meaning
To grow, to lengthen; also long, and senior in age or rank.
The plain word for a plant, a child or a business growing.
Other characters for “growth”
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