Determined Student Sees Beyond Her Blindness : Visualized Images Used in Writing Advertising Copy

When Susan Topercer was growing up in Orange, she loved to draw cartoons and illustrate short stories she had written. These even won her prizes.

“Ever since I was in second grade, I had been interested in writing and playing with words so they would come out clever and make people laugh,” the 28-year-old Irvine resident said. “And I loved to draw pictures to go along with my my writing.”

By the late 1970s, Topercer was studying biology and economics at UC Irvine, because she thought that the career prospects would be better than those in her favored fields. But she continued to enjoy coming up with catchy phrases and sketching accompanying illustrations.

As her studies drew to a close, she decided to become an advertising copywriter.

But the onset of blindness interrupted her plans. During a freak racquetball accident on the Irvine campus, the retinas of her eyes became detached, leading to total blindness two years later. Topercer’s mother wanted her to return home instead of completing her senior year and discouraged her from post-graduate studies.

But Topercer chose to continue to live on campus through graduation, and in the fall of 1982, she began her studies toward master’s degrees in business and public administration.

Pushes Herself

Rather than being defeated by her disability, Topercer has continued to push herself, testing the limitations of her impairment with the same intensity she had once brought to UCI’s sailing and crew teams.

She has also refused to abandon her plans to become an advertising copywriter, a highly visual field. Topercer is now enrolled in the Advertising Center, a 1,000-student Los Angeles technical school that annually offers advertising workshops combined with tips on landing a job.

These students, experts say, are seeking to enter a field in which applicants far outnumber the jobs available.

Despite these odds and the fact that Topercer’s instructors at the Advertising Center know of no other blind copywriters, they believe that she has excellent career prospects.

“From what I picked up teaching her (account management) and from the feedback from others (who have taught her), I feel that she functions visually and analytically as well as anyone,” Wayne Mansfield, Advertising Center executive director, said in a telephone interview. “She knows what things and colors look like because she did not become blind until after she had seen for a number of years.”

For 11 years the Advertising Center has offered hands-on advertising workshops. They are usually offered in the evening at advertising firms throughout Los Angeles, Mansfield said, and the technical school’s teachers are copywriters, art directors, account managers and media strategists who work at the agencies.

Presentation to the Class

During a recent workshop on copywriting concepts, in which Topercer is enrolled, instructor Mike Whitlow told the class, “You are writers. So, it doesn’t matter how you draw. What counts is how you visualize.”

Topercer proved Whitlow right. On Monday night Topercer stood before the class, to the left of four drawings, and presented a mock advertising campaign to 12 fellow students, who sat around a table in a conference room of Foote Cone & Belding, a West Los Angeles advertising firm where Whitlow is a copywriter.

“My client is Traveling Pet Groomers,” Topercer said in a full, confident voice. “The company sends out vans to your house, where they will groom pets. You don’t have to go through the hassle of taking them to the vet yourself.

“As you can see in the first picture, there’s a Pekingese with teased hair in the foreground. At the top is the headline: ‘We go out of our way to tease your dog.’ At the bottom is the tag line: ‘Forget the vet, we’ll do your pet. . . . Traveling Pet Groomers.’ ”

As Topercer went through her three other drawings over the next 20 minutes, the class responded with praise and criticism over how well her combination of drawings and words would do in persuading consumers to give the portable grooming service a shot.

“Three out of four of your concepts worked. That’s nice,” Whitlow said in summarizing his and the class’s views. “And I think the one that fell flat can be salvaged with the reworking I suggested.”

With her presentation complete, a quietly pleased Topercer motioned to her boyfriend, Bud Paul, 39, that her drawings could be taken down. He then escorted her back to her seat.

Until then, all in the room seemed to have forgotten that Topercer was blind. “Even the most cunning blind person can’t map out all her moves,” Topercer joked later in recalling her need to call on Paul for assistance.

She Has Matured

Topercer says learning to cope with her impairment has caused her to become a more mature person. “Actually being blind is good for me. I think I have become a fairer person. I evaluate people just like everybody else. But now I base my judgment on their character and not superficial things.

“Also, I have the opportunity now to do things that are unusual for someone in my circumstances.”

She has pursued this course with encouragement from Paul, whom Topercer describes as her “boyfriend and all-around-great guy.”

For the four years they have been together, Paul, an artist and graphic designer, has put his career on the back burner to help Topercer pursue her career goals. In a sense, he has combined his own ambitions with Topercer’s: Under her direction, he draws the sketches that accompany her advertising copy.

Paul is frequently by her side. He sits beside her in class describing the visual details of her classmates’ sketches to her. He helps her study by reading to her, sketches her visuals and takes her to class in Los Angeles on the back of his motorcycle.

First Copywriting Course

In the spring of 1984, she took her first copywriting course, which was taught by Jim deYong, executive vice president and creative director of the 85-person Irvine advertising firm of Reiser Williams deYong Inc., which he said is the second largest such company in Orange County.

“When she showed up that first night for class with her seeing eye dog (Dorrie), I thought: ‘Oh, my God,’ ” deYong recalled in a telephone interview. “I had previously taught a couple of students at Golden West (College) who could not hear or speak. They had someone who knew sign language to serve as a translator for them. But they just could not pick up the nuances of what was going on in class. It was a disaster.”

After the first class, deYong took Topercer aside and asked her to drop the class. “Though this was a writing class, I explained to her that advertising is very visual. With her lack of sight, I told her I did not see how she could compete with her (20 other) classmates.”

Undaunted, Topercer remembers urging deYong: “Give me a chance. Those other students were not blind--and more importantly, they were not me. Let me take the class for two weeks. If I’m not cutting it, just tell me, and I’ll drop out.”

DeYong agreed. “She was a terrific student--not just a perfect blind student--but a straight-out terrific student. Her ideas were fantastic. She was enthusiastic. And she worked twice as hard as anyone else in the class.”

He was so impressed with her work that he encouraged her to enroll at the Advertising Center to perfect her copywriting skills and to expose her to the broader job opportunities that existed in Los Angeles.

Shortly after Topercer began taking a class at the center in November, 1984, she was awarded the school’s first annual merit scholarship.

The $2,850 award pays for 11 workshops--each lasting six weeks--that must be completed to receive a program diploma, Advertising Center Executive Director Mansfield said.

5 Classes Completed

So far, Topercer has completed five of the classes, and she expects to complete the remaining six by the end of next year--after she receives her master’s degreee in business and public administration from UCI in June. She then plans to look for a job as an advertising copywriter.

Topercer explained why she believes that her blindness will not prevent her from becoming a copywriter.

“What makes an ad good is its concept, which comes from your noodle. When I’m dreaming or riding on the back of Bud’s (motorcycle), I see images and characters as vividly as I could when I had my sight,” she said.

“A lot of the difficulty in coming up with a marketing campaign develops because the creative people, like copywriters, do not understand business and vice versa. With my background in both fields, I think I will be able to bridge this communication gap better than others.”