Despite the development of the brilliant flat-panel TVs and computer screens that we all use on a daily basis, liquid crystals are far from being exhausted as a topic of research. Novel effects, new, modern, self-organized materials, and a range of applications are being developed, which are on the borderline between nanotechnology and soft condensed matter, and which use liquid crystals as a vehicle to study fundamental physical questions, all the way to mimicking nature and life. In this perspective article we will introduce an illustrative example, which will draw on a range of non-display aspects in liquid crystal research which have increasingly gained interest over the past years, namely self-organization of liquid crystals, colloidal ordering of magnetic nanoparticles, topological defects, and biological structures.