The Season 2 winners for the 2022 MUSE Creative and Design Awards had been officially announced by the International Awards Associate (IAA). With well over 6,000 entries received from across the world, the MUSE Creative Awards and MUSE Design Awards resumed their mission to honor creative and design professionals’ excellence.

For this competitive season, Formula Marketing walks away with the Category Design of the Year, Gold award in the competition. The winning work that seized the win was created by Chris Vasey for the official Downtown San Diego’s website: gaslamp.org.

“We pride ourselves on being a results-oriented agency. Whether it’s improving our client’s public image or achieving their goals, we use our tried-and-true formula to provide results. We believe that the best way to grow our clients’ businesses is to produce tangible results that they can see and measure. We take marketing personally,” said Sara Arjmand, founder and CEO of Formula Marketing. Arj was also recently selected as a finalist for San Diego Magazine’s annual Woman of the Year award. Chosen from a pool of 400 nominations, her leadership and ambition have her a strong contender for the prestigious award.

The MUSE Awards is a series of competitions hosted by the International Awards Associate (IAA), an organization that has continuously strived to honor creatives and designers for their excellence, regardless of their background or experience in the field. “The IAA team was caught off-guard by the works submitted for the second season of 2022’s MUSE Awards. These entries were truly astounding, and they certainly bring the level of competition up a notch,” Thomas Brandt, spokesperson of IAA, noted. “It’s amazing as always to witness great works lined up in the competition. The team is absolutely in awe of the level of creativity and ingenuity that is in the industry.” By inviting industry professionals to serve as the competition’s jury, IAA upheld their standards of impartiality and enforced industry standards as their assessment criteria. The jurors’ mission was to identify excellence and burgeoning talent amidst the myriad of entries submitted, which would serve as new benchmarks in their respective industries.

Grand Jury Panel

Applications were received from as many as 38 countries, but ultimately, only 110 jurors were selected. These esteemed individuals are professionals belonging to renowned companies, representing the industry’s best of the best, such as Founder and Creative Director of RCBD – Ralph Christian Bremenkamp, CEO of Paolo Cappello Design Studio – Paolo Cappello, Design Manager at Lavazza – Florian Seidl, Creative Director of Kre8ive Partners – Mark Turner, 3D Senior Global Packaging Designer at Tom Ford Beauty – Jiaru Lin, Founder of CHAMPARTE – Catherine Yu, Director at DesignAware – Takbir Fatima, Founder / CCO of Cutwater – Chuck McBride, Founder / CEO of Genome – Matthew Fitz-Henry, Chief Creative Officer at White Rabbit Budapest – Levente Kovacs, Founder of AdvAge Advertising & NFT Cube Agency – Maria Afroditi Patsi, Managing Partner at Coley Porter Bell – Jenn Szekely, Marketing Manager & Account Executive at M&A Creative Agency – Carla Neves, and etc. Each entry was judged using category-relevant industry standards. Blind judging was also employed to enforce impartiality. Under this approach, entries were evaluated on their own without comparison to others. These measures were in place as IAA believes that all works that gain recognition should do so based on their own merits.

Participation of International Brands

As the world’s gaze turned towards the competitions, the MUSE Creative and Design Awards received entries with names of prominent organizations from all over the world. Some entries were submitted directly by the organizations themselves, whereas some were submitted by entrants who represented them instead. Direct submissions saw familiar names such as DAVID CHANG DESIGN ASSOCIATES INT’L LTD., Prompt Design, Licht Kunst Licht AG, Thinc Design, António Fernandez Architects, Dong Lin Interior Design Construction, Prand, The Ritz-Carlton, W Hotels, Clarks Originals, Duncan Channon, St. Regis Hotels & Resorts, and Huawei / Aspiegel; whereas indirect submissions included Crunchyroll, Empire State Realty Trust, Doi Chaang Coffee Original Co., Ltd., Super Muffato Gourmet Champagnat, AP (Thailand) Public Company Limited, Toyota Motor North America, SKODA AUTO, Clinique, DHL, Disney, and Oxford Nanopore Technologies. “It’s a relief to see things get better after two grueling years of uncertainty, especially now that things are visibly improving,” Thomas noted. “The creative and design industries are certainly blessed with devoted practitioners. We are proud to be a platform for these individuals to showcase their talents and works. We can’t wait to see what else they will be bringing to the table in the future.”