Nobody misses a deadline they know about. They miss the one that moved, the one written down somewhere they never opened, or the one that turned out to be two deadlines wearing the same name.
01The three sources, and why they disagree
Your dates live in three documents, written by different people at different times. The brief was drafted before term. The handbook exists for the university’s records. Your tutor is telling you what happens in the room. All three are honest, and they do not agree.
The most common gap is between the submission and the hand-in. The brief says “submission Friday 12 December”. The handbook says uploads close at 16:00. Your tutor says the portfolio comes to studio on the Monday. Three dates, two formats.
| What you use | Good for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| The project brief | The scope, the deliverables, the intent of the project. | Written before term. Its dates are the likeliest to have moved, and it rarely gives a time. |
| The module handbook | The version the university defends if you dispute a mark. Weightings and late penalties live here. | A PDF nobody has opened since enrolment. Gives dates, not what to bring. |
| Your tutor, in studio | What happens in the room, in what order, and what “submission” means in practice. | Said once, to whoever was in that day. Not a record. Can be wrong about the formal date. |
| Moodle, Canvas or Blackboard | The only date enforced automatically, to the minute. | Often opens late. The file-size cap is here too, and nobody reads it until the night. |
When two sources disagree, the handbook wins on the date and your tutor wins on what to bring. Late penalties and resubmission rules get quoted from the handbook, not from studio.
Write down the upload cap while you are in there. It decides what your portfolio can contain, and people meet it for the first time at midnight. The portfolio template is being built with presets tested at 10 MB, 5 MB and 2 MB.
02Build the list once, in week one
About forty minutes at the start of a project, and you never do it again.
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Open all four sources side by side
The brief, the handbook, the upload portal and your studio notes. Four windows, one screen. You are hunting anything with a date on it.
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Write every date into one list, with its source
One line each: what it is, the date, the time, the format, and where you got it. The source is what settles arguments in week ten.
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Mark the disagreements and send one email
Flag every line where two sources differ, and put them in one message to your tutor. One email with four questions gets answered. Four emails do not.
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Put the answers back in the list and stop
The list is now the only place you look. If a date changes, it changes here, and the source records who told you.
03The deadlines nobody writes down
The formal dates are the easy half. These are real, immovable, and in no document you have been given.
- When the print bureau can print you. Their busy week is your submission week, and everyone else’s on your year.
- When the workshop closes. Model-making stops before the deadline does, sometimes days before.
- When you can get on site. Often one arranged visit with a member of staff.
- When the portal opens. A portal that opens two days before the deadline is a two-day deadline.
None of them are the university’s problem, so none of them are in the brief. Ring the bureau in week one and write the answer in the list.
One more date belongs here and it is on nobody’s document: the day you stop designing. That is two weeks before the submission, and it is the only deadline you set yourself.
Do
Write the date, the time, the format and the source on every line. “Portfolio, Fri 12 Dec, 16:00, PDF upload, module handbook.”
Don’t
Write “portfolio — December”. In week nine that tells you nothing you did not already fear.
04Put it somewhere it will interrupt you
A list you have to remember to look at is a list. A list in your calendar is a deadline.
Every line goes in your phone calendar as an all-day event, with alerts a week and two weeks before. The two-week alert is the one that matters: it is roughly the last moment a plan can change without costing you a night.
Give the events their full name. “Portfolio PDF, 16:00, Moodle” reads correctly on a lock screen at eight in the morning. An entry that says “PORTFOLIO” tells you only that a past version of you was worried.
Subscribe to the module’s calendar feed as well, if there is one, but keep your own list. The feed is somebody else’s record.
Open the brief, the handbook and the portal now, before anything is designed, and give it the forty minutes. The list you write today tells you in week nine whether you can afford what you are about to draw. It is the first item on the checklist, and everything after it depends on it.