This paper presents a method for generating blade shapes to be used as inputs to the direct- or inverse-bladedesign sequences. This method can generate subsonic or supersonic blades for compressors and turbines, or isolated airfoils, but the discussion in this paper is limited to subsonic-exit turbine blade rows. Gas-turbine blades are usually designed by a mixture of iterative, direct- and inverse-blade-design methods. The iterations are enormously reduced if the initial blade shape has performance characteristics near the desirable ones. The desirable performance characteristics are presented, and ways to manipulate the input striving for such characteristics (minimizing design iterations) are discussed. The overspeed regions near the leading edge are avoided. The performance curves of three blades generated by this method are included. It is concluded that blade performance is extremely sensitive to small changes in the shape of the surfaces and to changes or discontinuities in the derivative of the curvature of the blade surfaces. The order of magnitude of these changes is the same or lower than the order of magnitude of the thickness distribution of the boundary layers.