憶
Symbols Mind
memory of mind
ㄧˋ yì
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.
The faculty of holding the past. Chinese separates the act of recalling from the act of recording something so it can be recalled.
Before you commit
Choose with care憶 is bookish and nearly always appears with a partner - 回憶 for recollection, 記憶 for memory. Alone it reads as half a word.
Pairs well with回憶 for looking back on the past, 追憶 for remembering someone who has gone. Both are far more natural than 憶 alone.
At small sizesSixteen strokes with a heart radical on the left. The right side is dense and fills in when inked small.
Meaning
To recall; to bring the past back to mind.
Deliberate remembering - the looking back rather than the storing away.
Other characters for “memory of mind”
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