Outlaws of Thunder Junction
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The archetypes for each color pair are as follow:
: Animation
: Artistocrats
: Equipments
:
:
:
:
: Artisacs
: Food
:

Some of these non-traditional artifact pairs are harder to define, so shards or wedges may be easier:

Shards:
Bant Control
Esper Midrange
Grixis Control/Scam
Jund Aggro/Midrange/Scam/Aristrocrats
Naya Aggro

Wedges:
Abzan Sacrifice
Jeskai Prowess?
Sultai
Mardu
Temur

It seems this is actually more granular than looking at pairs. I'll need to establish my mono-color archetypes before I can start looking at how the colors interact. Then I'll look at the sign-post 2-color uncommons and legends. That should give me a good framework for choosing the other cards for each color.

Mono-Color Artifact Archetypes and Proficiencies:
White- Creature Tokens, Equipment, Control, Poison, Vehicles
Blue- Control, Animation, Poison, Vehicles
Black- Sacrifice, Scam, Aggro, Poison
Red- Aggro, Ramp, Equipment, Vehicles
Green- Ramp, Midrange, Aggro, Tokens, Counters

This gives me a better idea of what the cards for each color can actually accomplish. Green still has the least artifact support, though the more artifact-heavy sets tend to have good green creatures that approximate or compliment the goals of the other artifacts. For instance, there are several strong green creatures with toxic or other ways to add poison counters that fit nicely with the black, blue, and colorless toxic artifact creatures. Despite the frustration caused by poison, having it as a major theme of the cube that can be adapted to fit any deck speed may be a great way to balance other more easily drafted strategies.

Cube-Building Guidelines:

This is currently a Standard cube; I need a manageable pool if I am going to spend time debating each slot in the cube. With the change in rotation, Standard has a wealth of artifact interactions waiting to be explored. I will only broaden the format if I can’t make a cohesive strategy for each of the color pairs.

Don’t worry too much about the budget during first drafts. If a card is perfect for the archetype but costs way too much to get a physical copy of, just proxy it. This is an experiment in building a draftable collection. As new cards are released and we get better at drafting, our ability to gauge a particular card’s usefulness will change.

Coolness factor is absolutely a valuable metric. There should be enough cool cards in each archetype that drafters want to play them. No one should feel like they have to play an archetype just because it’s obviously the mathematically correct choice.

All cards in the cube should serve to promote artifact play.

Artifact removal is a necessary evil - without it, control and aggro have no chance against ramp, combo, and midrange strategies. Good interaction is key to a healthy format, so add removal liberally so everyone has a chance to draft at least 4 removal cards.

When building the cube, try Magic Duel’s rarity restrictions first. Hopefully having multiple copies of most cards will lead to players having a wide range of options with fewer instances of getting blocked from a particular strategy.

Start with the most fun, interesting, or exciting cards for each color first. This will become the reference against which each supporting card can be evaluated. Does this red combat trick have anything to do with my rakdos scam deck or my boros equipment deck? If not, then it might not be the right card for the cube.

I expect this to take a LONG time to build, and I will more than likely get bored several times along the way.
Notetaking is key to effective cube building. Every change to the cube needs to be documented, and at least some explanation should be given.
Working through the cards of a single color and how those cards interact with the strategies of each of that color’s pairs will be crucial to building the cube effectively. This workflow structure will be the most effective method for making sure I actually finish the project as it will give me clear goals and milestones, but it will also be extremely tedious. Therefore, I will only work on it when I feel like working on it. There’s no deadline pressure. If I don’t finish before rotation, I’ll just add the new cards to the library and keep the old standard cards.