道
Symbols Spirit
dao
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 of Daoist thought - the order things follow when nothing forces them. Also the ordinary word for road and for a method.
Before you commit
Choose with care道 is entirely ordinary in daily use. It means road, and 知道 just means to know. The philosophy is there only when context supplies it.
Cultural noteDao and Tao are the same character in two romanisation systems. Nothing is written differently; only the English spelling changes.
At small sizesTwelve or thirteen strokes with the walking radical sweeping underneath. That sweep suits a curved placement like a forearm.
Meaning
The Way; a road, a method, a doctrine; also to speak.
One of the most loaded characters in the language, and also one of the plainest.
Other characters for “dao”
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