A condensed overview discusses the existing grafting approaches and the surface behavior of various hyperbranched polymers. We focus on the recent strategies and corresponding characterization of the resulting surface morphologies and structures with a number of relevant recent results from the authors' own research and existing literature. Some results discussed here are important for prospective applications of hyperbranched polymers in biomedical fields, for resistive coatings, tough blends, and reinforced nanocomposites are briefly summarized as well. (C) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 50: 83100, 2012