Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond are a promising resource for solid state quantum technology. Wolters et al. (pp. 918–924) demonstrate the ability to integrate single NV centers in diamond nanocrystals into photonic or plasmonic hybrids using state of the art scanning probe lithography. Hereby the emission properties of the single NV centers are strongly modified. The authors review experiments concerning the controlled coupling of single defect centers in nanodiamonds to optical nanoantennas made of gold bowtie structures. By placing one and the same emitter at various locations with high precision, a map of decay rate enhancements is obtained. Furthermore, the authors demonstrate the formation of a hybrid cavity quantum electrodynamics (cQED) system in which a single defect center is coupled to a single mode of a gallium phosphite photonic crystal cavity.