道
Symbols Spirit
way
ㄉㄠˋ dào
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 way to do something, and the way things are. Chinese uses one character for both, and for the road you walk on as well.
Before you commit
Choose with care道 is doing a great deal of work. In daily use it is simply road, and only context makes it the Way. Expect the plain reading first.
Pairs well with正道 is the right way and 大道 the great one. Either resolves 道 to the sense you probably intend.
At small sizesTwelve or thirteen strokes with one long sweep at the base. Forgiving when small, and it suits a wrist or forearm.
Meaning
Way, road, method, principle.
Covers the literal road, the technique and the philosophical Way at once.
Other characters for “way”
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