Making it in the land of opportunity has often required outlandish signage and bold graphical articulation. Here we have selected a series of American objects that bear instantly recognisable design statements that have stood the test of time. Is there something distinctly American in their combination of commerce and culture, or is successful branding simply a case of mass consumption meets volume marketing?

All the examples featured here have become acknowledged showstoppers in their respective genres, adorning everything from fashion and fast food to architectural wonders and waistbands, mashing up high art and commerce in wondrous combinations along the way. These are their creative stories.

At the Sagrada Família in Barcelona, Andrea Mastrovito’s monumental new Agnus Dei installation – a symbolic glass lamb set within the cross crowning the 172.5m Tower of Jesus Christ – is intended to bring Antoni Gaudí’s vision to completion. But how to set it off just so? The ‘art engineers’ at London-based Studio Waldemeyer were tasked with illuminating the sculpture without showing obvious light sources – calling on the blend of design, engineering and craftsmanship that encapsulates his studio’s expertise.

Rising to the challenge, the team devised a concealed ultraviolet lighting technology with high-energy focused light sources that activate the artwork’s phosphorescent pigments after dark, making it glow. This also allows verses from John 1,29, inscribed within the gilded rays surrounding the sculpture, to emerge. The project was achieved using newly developed technology inspired by automotive lighting and applied to evoke an emotional visual effect. The result, the studio explains, ‘feels like pure magic: an artwork that emits a mysterious glow without any visible light source, wiring or technology. The engineering disappears entirely, leaving visitors to encounter only the lamb and its seemingly immaterial light.’

Artists and designers from the world over continue to choose to make the US their home. As the latest newcomers in this ‘nation of immigrants’ join a crowd of inspiring locals with dual heritage, their varied experiences are helping to shape creative America. Celebrating the plurality of voices contributing to this crucible of culture and dynamism, we speak to five studios to watch. Their founders (all Wallpaper* US400 honorees) have roots, variously, in Poland, Vietnam, India, South Korea and China, but have made the US their creative base. Here, they tell us how their heritage influences their creative output.

What do you get the tech bro, crypto sis or picky audiophile pal who has everything? How about half a million quid’s worth of hi-fi equipment? Meet AMR’s Luna Series luxury audio collection. A decade in the R&D, designed in collaboration with the Grateful Dead’s fabled sound engineer, in a limited run of 148 sets, using components that don’t – and won’t – exist anymore: this is, in a very real sense, an amp that goes all the way up to, well, 111.