Advanced materials are typically characterized by complex nano- and microstructures with various phase compositions, grain sizes, chemical inhomogeneity or homogeneity, crystalline and amorphous structures, all leading to metastability. Over the past 30 years, many new materials have been developed making use of these possibilities and leading to many interesting properties. Prominent examples of such materials are metallic glasses, nanocrystalline materials and high entropy materials. In recent years, new ideas and novel synthesis routes have shown the way to advanced materials with yet unknown structures and properties. The talk will present examples of synthesis, characterization and properties of advanced materials with amorphous and crystalline structures: nanoglasses, cluster-assembled amorphous and crystalline materials and high entropy oxides.