The design of sheet metal working processes is based on the knowledge about the deformation mechanism and the influence of the process parameters. The typical geometric process parameters are the die geometry, the initial sheet thickness, the initial blank shape, and so on. The initial blank shape is of vital importance in the most sheet metal forming operations, especially in the deep drawing process, since the forming load and the strain distribution are significantly affected by the shape of an initial blank. The influence of the initial blank shape on a square cup deep drawing process is investigated by the numerical simulation and the experiment. The numerical simulation is carried out by a modified membrane finite element method which takes bending deformation into account. The numerical and experi-mental results show that the initial blank shape have strong influence on the forming load and the strain distribution. The numerical results are compared with the experimental results and other numerical results which are calculated with the membrane theory.