Leuchtturm1917 versus Midori MD

For a few years the new arrivals row looked like a referendum. Leuchtturm1917 in navy, azure, a Fernweh, a Sehnsucht, a Wanderlust, a Zeitgeist — German words for longing, sold in Aspley as if longing were a colour. Midori MD, quieter, cream, fountain-pen friendly as a claim on the homepage. Customers would hold one in each hand and ask which was better. Better at what, we would say, and then we would have a useful conversation.

These two notebooks are not rivals so much as different rooms. You can own both. You should not expect them to do the same work.

What Leuchtturm is for

Leuchtturm is a system. Numbered pages. A contents page you will either use or feel guilty about. Stickers for the spine. A hard cover that says meeting. Dot grid that made a generation of bullet journals possible, including the ones that lasted a month. It is a good object. It is a German idea of order that Australian offices recognised.

Fountain pens on Leuchtturm are a negotiation. Some inks feather. Some ghost. A Japanese fine will usually behave. A wet stub will show you the back of the page. If your handwriting is the point, test before you buy three of the same colour because the names were beautiful. The pairing guide applies.

If you want a dated diary, Leuchtturm will sell you one that still thinks the year might be European. Check the week start. Check whether you are buying an academic year you do not have. See planners for the Australian year.

What Midori MD is for

MD is paper. The notebook is a way of holding the paper. Cream, a little tooth, a cover that looks like a pad and becomes softer in a bag. It is the sheet we used under the glass when we wanted a fountain pen to tell the truth. Iroshizuku looks like itself on MD. A Pilot fine feels like a Pilot fine. You will not get a contents page. You can write one.

MD is less "professional" in a meeting until you decide that a cream notebook is more professional than a gadget. It is more honest as a writing object. If you came into the shop because the homepage said fountain-pen friendly, this is the notebook that sentence was about, along with Tomoe River in the long 2014 wait.

There are MD variants — cotton, grid, a diary — but the house note is the same: buy it for the sheet, not for the brand story.

How we chose for people

Teachers who marked in ink and needed to flip pages fast: Leuchtturm, fine nib, or MD if they already hated ghosting. Architects and designers who sketched and wrote: MD, or a Traveler's sketch refill. Bullet journalers who wanted the apparatus: Leuchtturm, and a warning about abandoning the key by March. Fountain-pen people who wanted to see shading: MD first, Tomoe River if they were ready for thin paper. Travellers who wanted a cover: neither, until we had talked about a Traveler's system.

Price, in Australia, has always been part of the choice. Both are imported. Both feel expensive if you grew up on newsagency exercise books. Buy the one you will finish. An unfinished Leuchtturm with a beautiful German word on the cover is still unfinished.

You can stop choosing a personality

The internet would like you to be an MD person or a Leuchtturm person. Be a person who writes. Keep MD on the desk where the pens live. Keep a Leuchtturm in the bag where the meetings live. Or pick one and ignore the referendum. When the notebook is full, decide whether to refill or replace. The longing, if you still need a German word, is for a finished page, not for a brand.

Covers, bindings and the bag test

A hard Leuchtturm will protect a page in a stuffed bag and will also bruise the fruit. An MD softcover will take the curve of a satchel and will dog-ear if you are careless. Do the bag test at the shop if you can: close the book, put it in the bag you actually carry, see whether you still want to open it. A book you will not open is the wrong book, whatever the paper.

Bindings fail differently. Glue can crack in heat. Stitches can loosen. Neither brand is immune. If the writing matters, the refill or rebind essay is the next page.

Colour as a false referendum

Leuchtturm sold longing as a colour name and we listed those names because they were stock. MD sold cream and let the paper speak. You can like a navy cloth and still want MD inside, which is why covers and refills exist as a system elsewhere. If you are choosing only one book today, choose the sheet you will write on tomorrow morning, in the first meeting or at the first cup of tea. The longing can wait.

What we told teenagers, and what we told their parents

Teenagers who wanted a bullet journal got a Leuchtturm and a warning about keys and guilt. Teenagers who wanted to write got MD and permission to be messy. Parents who wanted a "nice diary" got asked whether the child would be allowed to ruin it. If the answer was no, we sold a cheaper book.

The referendum is simpler when you remember who will be told off for a crooked line.

After you have chosen, stop choosing

Use the book until it is full. Do not keep a twin waiting on the shelf as a threat. The referendum ends when the first page is dated. If you chose wrong, you will know by page twenty and you can choose again. That is cheaper than a personality.

Take both books home on successive months if you must, but finish one. A half-used navy longing and a half-used cream pad is the referendum gone wrong. The better notebook is the one with more dated pages in it by June, written in the weather you actually have.