It's insane for me to think that I have now been a part of the CubeCraft/Ziax team for over a year. Leaving University and starting a new job in a global pandemic was far from how I planned things to go, but I am very glad to have found the company! In my first year, I have helped produce video content, advertising campaigns and boosted their social media following by roughly 400%... all on Slack and video calls! In fact, I only went into the office for the first time a couple of weeks ago! So I essentially worked my first year without meeting a single co-worker (what a strange time to be alive)!
When I first joined CubeCraft back in June 2020, my first major task was helping the team implement a large re-brand for the gaming platform. 1 year on, and I suddenly felt a very strange sense of deja vu as I was tasked with helping Digital Tree Media become Ziax in a major company re-brand! The past couple of weeks have got me thinking about my time working at CubeCraft, so I thought I'd write a blog post showing off some of my favorite achievements!
1. Producing CubeCraft Trailers!
One of my favorite tasks at CubeCraft is filming, editing, and producing their video game trailers! The trailers that I have uploaded to YouTube have views ranging from 20k to 400k views and I am insanely proud with how some of them have turned out! While I have obviously had experience editing video before, I have never turned my nose at editing trailers prior to working at CubeCraft so this has been a really interesting learning experience.
Here are some of my favorites!
Side note: I also produce other video content for CubeCraft's YouTube channel such as video series like Top 5 and Behind-The-Scenes. Top 5 ran for over 10 episodes and proved to be incredibly popular. Due to popular demand, I recently started a brand new series called CubeCraft Clips which aims to please fans Top 5 fans while also giving the series a broader appeal.
2. Helping with Playstation and Microsoft trailers!
On two occasions I have also had the opportunity to help with trailers posted on the Official Minecraft/Microsoft YouTube channels and also on Playstations Twitter account. My involvement consisted of collecting footage of CubeCraft content and getting it to Mojang/Microsoft to use in their trailers.
3. Launching a TikTok!
At the end of January 2021, I launched a TikTok page for CubeCraft. In this first month, the page saw 20,000 new followers and over 1 million views overall. Since its launch, the page now stands at 85,000 followers, 800,000 likes, and over 3 million views overall. It is now CubeCraft's most popular social media page!
4. Running CubeCraft's social media!
One of my constant tasks throughout the year has been updating CubeCrafts social media accounts with new content every single day. So far my efforts haven't been in vein, with CubeCraft's Instagram jumping from 3,000 followers to 21,000 followers CubeCraft's Twitter rising from 75,000 followers to 83,000. This change in following is due to completely changing what kind of content CubeCraft would post daily. Instead of just focussing on updates, these pages now also post memes, artwork, and teases for upcoming projects. Since conducting this change, Instagram's average likes per post have risen from 300-400 to 1000-3000.
I'd be here all day if I uploaded everything I've posted over the past year, so here's just some of my favorite graphic designs I have produced!
To view more, check out CubeCraft's socials:
Here's a selection of graphics I've made:
Here are some Instagram/Facebook stories:
Here are some of my favorite tweets over the year.
My first tweet on CubeCraft's Twitter account is still the most liked tweet I have seen!
The release of CubeCraft on Playstation was a huge deal, and being able to produce content to promote it was great fun.
Another great moment was seeing the server hit its player record back in February. The server has since gone onto hitting 50,000 on a regular basis which is incredibly exciting!
Sometimes simplicity and humor are all you need when looking for a popular tweet...
I've also ran a series of random competitions. Such as the time I asked followers to find a hidden easter egg within the previous month's tweets. Or the time I drew (awful) illustrations requested by people in the comments!
5. Helping design CubeCraft branding!
I won't go into too much detail about this one, as I've already written a blog post detailing how I went about performing this re-brand. You can read it here.
One of my biggest tasks from the past year was completely re-designing CubeCraft's store and server icons. This involved a huge amount of trial and error until eventually I found a look which worked with CubeCraft's new logo and branding. I produced a few designs which have even gone onto feature in most CubeCraft content, such as the 'cubey' background featured below.
Here's how the server look changed before and after my input.
Before After.
I also updated the look of CubeCraft's socials upon joining in June. This included creating new banners, profile pictures and a new intro/outro for CubeCraft video content.
More recently, I helped produce some social banners for Ziax's own accounts.
I also helped create some graphics for one of CubeCraft's latest game; Craftable Hats.
They can be viewed in the Game's hub:
Thanks for reading this (very long) blog post! I hope this gave you somewhat of an insight into my role at CubeCraft/Ziax!
Until next time,
Rowan.