夢
Symbols Life
dream
ㄇㄥˋ mèng
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 dream you have asleep; the ambition sense needs a second character to come across.
Before you commit
Choose with care夢 alone is the sleeping dream, and classically it leans toward illusion: 人生如夢, life is like a dream. For dream as ambition, write 夢想.
JapaneseJapan writes it 夢 as well, read yume, and it is one of the most common single characters in Japanese design and calligraphy. Expect a Japanese reading first from many viewers.
At small sizesThirteen strokes stacked in four layers. The middle band closes up quickly, so it needs size.
Meaning
A dream in sleep; also illusion and what will not last.
The single character, weighted toward sleep and impermanence.
Other characters for “dream”
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