Polymer colloids constitute auspicious materials for the generation of printable and large area photonic materials by means of solvent-processing and self-assembly. Synthetics procedures have been developed to generate monodisperse particles from dielectric materials such as polystyrene and PMMA; however, well-defined and monodisperse colloids of semiconducting polymers, which would form excellent building blocks for self-assembled photonic materials, are not readily available. I will present novel synthetic pathways affording monodisperse colloids, which are entirely composed of pi-conjugated polymers. Several palladium-catalyzed and metal-free dispersion polymerization procedures leading to perfectly spherical particles will be presented. By adjusting the synthetic conditions also anisotropic particles and core-shell geometries can be produced. These monodisperse conjugated polymer particles readily assemble into photonic crystals exhibiting both photonic and electronic characteristics and unprecedented photonic properties. Through incorporation of switchable molecular units, the electronic bandgap of the pi-conjugated material can be changed leading to responsive photonic materials. Additionally, post-modification of the colloidal particles through thiol-yne click-chemistry enables functionalization with bio-medical recognition motifs. The resulting particles can be applied as imaging probes for detection and specific labelling of cells.