理
Symbols Mind
reason
ㄌㄧˇ lǐ
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 for thinking straight, and the grounds you give for a belief. Chinese uses one character for both.
Before you commit
Choose with care理 covers principle, order, texture and to manage. It is broad and calm rather than sharply intellectual, and 不理 even means to ignore.
Pairs well with道理 for sense or a valid point, 合理 for reasonable, 理性 for reason as a faculty.
At small sizesEleven strokes in an even left-right split. Scales down cleanly and sits well on a curve.
Meaning
Principle, reason; the grain or order running through something.
The most useful character here, though it means principle before it means reasoning.
Other characters for “reason”
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