The Well-Appointed Desk

Originally, my plan was too include THREE different Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks in one post but it was going to be way too much for one post.  So, this will be part two of three. Part 1 is available here.

The Leuchtturm 1917 100 Years Bauhaus Edition (A5-sized, $25.95) is available in the appropriately primary colors of Red, Yellow, and Blue as well as Black. Each edition features different colored edge painting and printed dots inside.

The cover features a quote from Vasily Kandinsky, former deputy director of the Bauhaus, “Everything begins with a dot” which I find inspiring.

I purchased the Black edition which featured blue edge painting and blue printed dots on the pages. It is a little unclear if the Yellow cover with black edge painting has yellow dots or black dots, either might be challenging to use. Leuchtturm 1917 had previously released a Red Dots Edition so the Blue cover with red dots is an option available elsewhere in their product line. If anyone has purchased the Yellow cover, let me know in the comments if the interior is black or yellow dots.

The photo above, showing the blue edge painting on the pages and the two ribbon bookmarks also most accurately show the color of the standard Leuchtturm 1917 paper. I don’t understand how or why, even in my studio, the subtly of color of the Leuchtturm 1917 ivory paper is so hard to capture accurately. The photos that follow are considerably too yellow to be considered color accurate but the photos do show the behavior of the inks on the paper which I deemed as important as capturing the paper color.

The Bauhaus Edition notebooks have all the same features as the traditional Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks: two ribbon bookmarks, gusseted pocket and perforated pages in the back, elastic closure, archiving stickers and promotional pamphlets inside. The sewn binding can easily be opened to lay flat and the numbered pages and index in the front of the notebook make it easy to use for bullet journaling or just general organization.

The paper quality is good. It’s a bit toothy and a warm ivory color. Unlike the Whitelines Link notebook, I had minimal issues with showthrough or bleedthrough with average use. The color fidelity is more consistent with the results I’ve had on other non-Tomoe paper. Shading in the fountain pen inks is visible.

There was no real issue with other water-based pens or pencils on the standard Leuchtturm 1917 paper. My only issue was with the blue dots. They are a bit darker than I would have expected them to be especially when compared with the light grey dots on regular Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks. If you regularly use Rhodia dot paper or ruled, it might not be bothersome to you as they seem to be similar in brightness but if you prefer your dot grid to be light and nearly un-noticable, then the blue dots might be as distracting to you as they were to me.

Overall, I still feel that the Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks (be they standard or special editions like the Bauhaus edition) are good products. They are a step up from Moleskine in terms of ink handling and they are well constructed. They feel durable and provide a good middle ground between the wafer-thin Tomoe notebooks (often with astronomical numbers of pages) and thick, chunky 120gsm or thicker notebooks — both of which can feel like a considerable commitment to your notebook life. If you are looking for a “gateway drug” notebook for a new pen fan or you want a quality notebook for everyday notes, Leuchtturm 1917 really is the best standard to choose. Now, if they would just offer more B6-sized notebooks, I would be a very happy pen nerd.

DISCLAIMER: Some items included in this review were purchased with funds from our amazing Patrons. You can help support this blog by joining our Patreon. Please see the About page for more details.

Originally, my plan was too include THREE different Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks in one post but it was going to be way too much for one post.  So, this will be part one of three.

Most pen enthusiasts are familiar with Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks. Leuchtturm 1917 is often considered the step-up from a Moleskine and a favorite with Bullet Journalers since the light dot grid lends itself to building page spreads. What might be surprising is that there are other options available from Leuchtturm other than the standard (AKA classic) paper/dot design. Of course, Leuchtturm offers lined and blank papers as well as their beloved dot grid and they even have a sketchbook option now. But I’m not covering those in this series. No, I am going to be talking about the Whitelines notebooks, the Bauhaus Edition and the new 120gsm editions.

To start, I am going to review the Leuchtturm 1917 Whitelines Link edition (A6 Pocket, $13.46USD). Whitelines Link was originally created to be Leuchtturm’s answer to an analog-digital solution, the paper is pale grey with white dots. While the notebook came with instructions for using the digital syncing options, I was more interested in the potential of the subtle grey paper with white dots.

The Whitelines Link notebook comes with all the same features that other Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks feature: back gusseted pocket, ribbon bookmark with finished ends, stickers to use for archiving your notebook, elastic band, perforated pages in the back and assorted promotional sheets. The A6-sized notebook only had one bookmark compared with the two ribbon bookmarks included in the A5-sized notebooks.

In the corners of the pages are QR-style icons which help to align and square pages when scanning or photographing them to use with a digital app like Dropbox or Evernote.

The notebook came with a booklet explaining the process and development of the analog-to-digital system.

But like I said earlier, I was more interested in the paper and the grey with white dots design and how it might perform in a strictly analog method.

The short answer to this question is: not well. What I didn’t realize was that the process for making the paper grey was to print the entire sheet and leave the white of the paper exposed. As a result, there is an inky coating over the whole page. Most printing inks are oil- or plastic-based making water-based inks like fountain pen and rollerball inks resist the surface.

(Think or those drawings you might have done as a kid where you drew with crayon and then went over the page with a watercolor paint. Same theory applies here except the whole page is covered with a waxy film.)

The paper seems to also be a slightly different texture to the standard Leuchtturm paper or the process of printing on the entirety of each sheet altered the paper. Fountain pen inks bled and showed through in ways I haven’t experienced before with Leuchtturm.

In testing other non-fountain pens, some of that some resist behavior I experienced with the fountain pens was apparent with felt tip and brush pens. I also had a run of dead or dried up pens. Honestly, I started to wonder if this post was cursed!

There was less showthrough and bleedthrough with the non-fountain pens which was somewhat heartening. Because of the toothier quality of the paper, pencils performed particularly well and, of course, if you prefer a ballpoint pen, this paper would be just fine.

I extended my fountain pen tests to verify that the results were not specific to one particular ink. There is clearly evidence of the ink resisting the paper and makes the ink look lighter, and kind of blotted. I can;t think of any other way to describe the subtle voids in the strokes.

Further non-fountain pen tests revealed that most water-based inks like rollerball pens could bleedthrough.

All-in-all, I would not recommend the Whitelines Link to fountain pen enthusiasts. Even if you are looking for a method to digitize your notebooks, I believe there is probably other methods that can be used that would allow use of good paper and pens and STILL be able to digitize your notebooks. This initial foray into the Leuchtturm 1917 “other notebooks” was a huge disappointment. I’m glad I didn’t invest in the larger, more expensive A5 version of the Whitelines Link. Let’s hope Part 2 & 3 of this review series will be a little brighter.

DISCLAIMER: Some items featured in this review were purchased with funds from our amazing Patrons. You can help support this blog by joining our Patreon. Please see the About page for more details.