We're Demi and Melissa.
Demi is a professional magician. Melissa is a professional actress. We run Flipsi together.
We started with double-sided surprise puzzles, and we've kept following the same instinct ever since: make something people enjoy, then give them a little more than they expected.
A magician and an actress. Not the obvious route into a puzzle company, but here we are.
The stage came first.
Before Flipsi, we both spent our working lives performing.
Demi, magician
Demi has spent most of his life doing magic. A lot of the way he thinks comes from that.
He notices where people are looking, what they think is happening, what they haven't noticed, and when it's better not to give something away yet. Misdirection and surprise come naturally to him.
Melissa, actress
Acting taught Melissa to ask relentless questions, talk ideas out, embody them, then play with whatever comes up. She approaches Flipsi ideas in much the same way.
She can't begin the artwork until she knows what the idea is really about.
One of us was trained to protect the surprise. The other was trained to find the meaning. Both habits came with us.
Is this needed?
We have more ideas than we could ever make. The harder part is deciding which ones are worth following.
Usually one of us brings an idea and the other starts asking questions. We pull it apart, make it less obvious, make it more specific, and keep going until we can both see what the idea can become.
- FirstWhy this?
- ThenWhy now?
- ThenWhat are we trying to make someone feel?
- ThenWhat does this add that isn't already there?
- And alwaysCan we imagine further in?
A fright wasn't enough.
Our first collection was Haunted Places and What Lurks Within. The original idea was very simple: a haunted place on the front, something scary on the back.
We both loved the idea, but it felt thin. A fright is real, but it is quick: a jolt, and it's over.
So we started asking questions. Why is the place haunted? Who is there? What happened? Why this house, at this moment? And so on.
Once we had the story, we began building from there. It helped us decide what belonged in the artwork, what connected the two sides, and what needed to be left unexplained.
We do this with every collection so we know what we're building.
So who is in the house? Go on. Ask.
It's not so much who, but what.
Or… is it?
Whatever you decide is happening in there, you're right.
This is what making Flipsi looks like.
Once an idea makes it past all the talking, it becomes drawings, cardboard, samples, mistakes and a lot of versions.
The artwork has its own process. You can follow one artwork from its first version to the finished piece in How the artwork is made →
We surprise each other a lot.
We take turns doing surprise dinners. There aren't really any rules, except the other person can't know what they're getting. Sometimes it's something we know they'll love. Sometimes we're trying something new and genuinely don't know if they will.
Birthday scavenger hunts aren't uncommon. Neither are pointless surprises Demi comes up with when he thinks Melissa needs a lesson in coffee snobbery. Like when he put a jar of instant coffee inside one of her wholebean shipper boxes, taped it back up, and left it at the front door. She thought her roaster had sent an extra kilo by mistake, and was halfway through “I should probably email them and pay for it, hey?” when she got it open. Demi said nothing. He just watched the confusion, then the disappointment, then the laughter. Then the scowl.
To spark unexpected joy.
For us, that can be a reveal you didn't see coming or a tiny detail that makes you laugh.
Thank you for being here.