Oftentimes, places are considered backdrops to our lives, setting the scene for our other priorities: work, relationships, health. 

But places shape us deeply. It's like how winemakers think deeply about terroir: how a region’s climate, soil, and topography will impact the quality of grapes. In the same way, the places where we grow our roots, the places we inhabit for periods of time, really shape our identities. Perhaps that's why, when we meet new people, we tend to introduce ourselves based on where we're from. 

We created Commonplays to appreciate places: the ones we encounter on travels, as well as those we call our homes. Through our writing and photos, we take a closer look at different aspects of places—from communities to public spaces to urban design—and how they influence our daily lives. (As Winston Churchill once said, “we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.”)

Commonplace books were used by artists, writers, and thinkers to record their inspirations. Virginia Woolf, Marcus Aurelius, and Leonardo Da Vinci kept them—and so did fictional characters, like Sherlock Holmes. 

They were personalized scrapbooks where people recorded and reacted to what interested them: recipes, quotes, drawings, observations, ideas. Each book was a reflection of the person behind it, an autobiography of what they were learning. 

We consider this publication as a modern-day commonplace book. It’s a space to gather creative gems, an archive of creativity and innovation from around the world. 

Commonplays is a made-up word that combines the things most important to us: community, play, and places. 

We're Maggie and Daniel. We met while studying at Princeton, lived in San Francisco for 3 years, and left in early 2019 to start Commonplays.

Maggie previously worked at design firm IDEO and wrote for publications like Forbes and Business Insider. She grew up on the East Coast, but has also been shaped by her time living abroad with host families in Australia, Korea, Malaysia, and China. 

Daniel worked at an innovation company and freelanced as a production assistant for documentaries. He once took a solo road trip where he lived in a car, reading a book from each state to understand the relationship between literature and place. He's obsessed with urban design and spent his last year at Princeton studying how public spaces are used on campus.

Email us at hello@commonplays.com and follow us on Facebook for regular updates on our posts.