The Leuchtturm1917 Ruled Notebook

The Leuchtturm1917 notebook is relatively new in the US market, however as its name implies it has been around since 1917, and with the tag line “Details Matter” you can tell from the notebook that they have spent those 90 years perfecting the little details of their notebooks.  I picked up this version of the Small Ruled Leuchtturm1917 from Organize.com a few weeks ago, and am now getting to review this fun office supply.

The Leuchtturm1917 Ruled Notebook Table of Contents for Organizing Your Notes

The Leuchtturm ruled notebook looks very similar to your basic Moleskine notebook with its thick black leather-like cover, slightly ivory colored pages, and black elastic closure, however I’d say that based on my experience so far, this is a much better option.  The features you will find packed in the Leuchtturm are:

• 185 pages of 70 gsm paper
• Numbered pages
• A blank table of contents
• Acid free, no bleed paper
• Thread bound binding for a flat opening notebook
• 8 perforated sheets in the back
• Expandable pocket in the back cover
• Satin ribbon page marker
• 4 stickers to label and archive your notebook with

When you compare all of those offerings to a regular Moleskine, it kind of makes you wonder why someone might pick a Moleskine over the Leuchtturm notebook, I know I wouldn’t.

The Leuchtturm1917 Pages with Space for Dates and Pre-Printed Page Numbers

As you can see in the above photo, there is ample space provided on each page for you to write the date, and the bottom outside corner of each page is pre-numbered to help you manage your table of contents provided to you in the front few pages of the Leuchtturm.  In that photo you can also see the ribbon page finder, which is pretty much standard on any good notebook or journal like this.

Leuchtturm1917 Writing Sample Showing Minimal Bleed with Most Pens

The most important thing to look at with the Leuchtturm besides the ample feature set, is how a variety of pens perform on its pages, because that is where I have my biggest beef with most of the Moleskine notebooks I’ve tried.  My biggest issue with Moleskine notebooks of this style is that any ink (besides ballpoint) that I’ve tried ALWAYS bleeds or feathers, and it just makes for an incredibly sloppy looking notebook.  I was pleasantly surprised with the Leuchtturm because I did not see any feathering with most pens other than the Sharpie Grip Pen and the Uniball Vision Elite, but it was minimal with those two.  I think the scan is good enough above that you can see the feathering on those two pages, and I used multiple fountain pens, liquid ink pens, and gel ink pens to really test out the paper.

The only thing that bugs me about the Leuchtturm and the writing experience is that the ink definitely shows through to the back side of each page that you write on, so with most pens, you will only be able to write on one side of the page.  When it comes to high quality notebooks like this, I just don’t understand why manufacturers wouldn’t make this a top priority so that you can utilize both sides of the paper.  For the most part, I do like the Leuchtturm a lot, but I’ll probably stick to my Rhodia Web Notebook when I want something in this class because the quality of the paper is just so far superior.

The four Leuchtturm1917 Archive Labels that come with your Notebook

I’ll leave you with this last picture of the Leuchtturm which is kind of appropriate since this is probably the last part of your notebook that you would use.  These are the stickers that come with each notebook for you to use to label and archive your notebook.  You get two square stickers, for the inside/outside covers, and two long skinny stickers that would fit on the outside binding.

If you are interested, you can see all of the Leuchtturm offerings on their website.

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