Hobonichi Cousin vs Common Planner
Hey everyone!
Today I will be reviewing the Hobonichi Cousin and the Common Planner by Sterling Ink. I’m excited to show you all the ways these planners are similar and also different.
Diving in, I will go page by page.
The Hobonichi Cousin opens to a two-page spread with the current year on the left and the previous and subsequent years on the right. The Common Planner opens to a yearly page with only the current year on the right.
Turning the pages, the Hobonichi Cousin has two, two-page spreads for a yearly index. January through June on the first spread, and July through December on the second spread.
The next few pages in the Common Planner provide a two-page spread for each quarter. On the left side is a Priorities section and headers for the three months in that quarter. On the right is a layout very similar to the yearly index in the Hobonichi Cousin. Each month name is across the top followed by a blank space. In the Cousin, there are three check boxes, but not in the Common Planner. In each planner, the month’s dates form as a vertical line, creating three columns – one for each month. The bottom of each page provides a blank space in each of the planners. The layout is very similar in both the Cousin and the Common Planner; the most obvious difference being the color blocks used in the Cousin to indicate the weekends, compared to no color blocks in the Common Planner. Across the board, you’ll find the Common Planner to be a more minimal layout.
The Common Planner gives you these spreads for each quarter of the year, pairing the priority and goal pages with the yearly index. Whereas the Cousin only gives you one quarter per page.
Next are the monthly pages. Both planners include an extra month, which is the last month of the previous year. Both have Monday-start monthly calendars, which isn’t a feature many planners have. We offer sticker kits and items to turn your monthly calendar into a Sunday start in our shop, but just printed, both of these planners are Monday-start.
The grid and box sizing is slightly different between these two planners. It's hard to tell a difference, but take my word for it!
Next, in the Hobonichi Cousin, you have January, February, and March of the following year. In the Common Planner, you only have the upcoming January.
After all these monthly pages, you have weekly pages in both planners. These planners have very similar spreads, with a spot in the corner indicating the month and a little mini calendar with the current week circled. The Hobonichi Cousin does have some of their coloring again to indicate weekends, where the Common Planner does not. They each have sidebars on the left side of the spread.
A big difference is that the Hobonichi Cousin’s timeline starts at 5:00 AM and goes to 4:55 AM, giving you just short of a full 24-hour timeline. I like that it doesn't start at midnight, and for people who have later shifts I think they did a good job of breaking up the day. The Common Planner’s timeline starts at 6:00 AM and goes to midnight. If you need more timeline, you can add it. If you don't need the timeline then you can use this spot for something else; to-do lists or extra decoration. At the top both planners have the date and an abbreviated day of the week.
Even in the English version of the Hobonichi Cousin, you will find some Japanese characters. The weekends and holidays are also shaded in the Cousin, whereas the Common Planner remains very minimalistic, without color, and all in English.
Another big difference found in the Common Planner, is no line dividing up the days. In the Cousin, you can see a dark line and the time is shifted in, using a grid space. The Common Planner stays true to it’s overall minimalist aesthetic giving you the option to divide your weeks horizontally or vertically. This provides more writing space in the grids due to the wider columns.
Using stickers is a way to cover up the shading and coloring in the Hobonichi Cousin, which is why I personally don’t mind these features.
After all 52 weeks, the Common Planner begins the blank notebook pages section. These are beautiful, blank pages except for a little page number.
Now, this is where it does matter which version of Common Planner you have. The full-year Common Planner has 370 blank pages in the back. The half-year books have 184 blank pages in the back of each book. In the A5 Compact, there are 121 blank pages; this is also the thinnest book from Common Planner.
Back to the Hobonichi Cousin, after all the weekly pages, there is page with a left-aligned heading: “Turning the page to a new year”. It has a couple of mini monthly calendars in the bottom corners. I've seen these pages used as a vision board, similar to what the Common Planner has at the beginning of their book.
Turning again, there are dated daily pages. These look quite different from the Common Planner’s blank and minimalistic pages. The Hobonichi Cousin provides a dated day for every day of the year. They provide a blank page at the beginning of each month with the month name and shading along the outer edge of the page. Each month has a different grid color as well.
These pages have the month, the date, the day of the week, the moon phase, and the sequential day of the year. The page has a grid section with a small timeline and a couple check boxes at the top. There are quotes at the bottom written in Japanese or English, depending on which one you have. At the bottom corner is a mini calendar.
After these dated daily pages, are a handful blank grid pages, followed by reference pages. Some of these I find to be helpful, while others are useless to me.
And there you have it! My comparison of the Hobonichi Cousin and the A5 Common Planner by Sterling Ink! I hope you found this to be helpful; I would love to know your thoughts on these two planners.
Until next time!
~Mandy
