How to Create Custom Wallpaper and Icons for your Computer

Custom Desktop Aesthetics

If you want to personalize your desktop computer and make it more aesthetically pleasing, custom wallpaper and icons are a great place to start. In this article, we'll cover how to create your own customized wallpaper and icons, as well as tips and tricks for optimizing your design for productivity.

Digital File Organization

Before we dive into creating custom wallpaper and icons, it's important to have a system in place for organizing your digital files. This can help you find what you need quickly and keep your computer clutter-free. Here are a few tips for digital organization:

Create folders for different types of files, such as documents, photos, and music. Most computers come with a few standard folders such as those just mentioned, but you should create folders for more specific groups of files within these standard folders. Organization, It's all in the details.

Use descriptive file names that make it easy to identify what's in each file. This is where you will need to decide what will work for you. If you can easily find and remember a folder name such as [20230226_Youtube_project123 ] then you do you!

If you need to do something different do it, it needs to work for you, maybe you need to be a little more descriptive so that you can search for your Beautifully Aesthetic Mystical Forest Icons maybe you should think of using folder names such as [ Mystical Forest Icons ] so that when you need them you can just type in the wonderful little search bar in File Explorer or Finder.

Regularly delete files you no longer need.

This means your Download Folder and anywhere else things tend to get a bit messy! Try to keep on top of this wonderfully Chaotic landscape that is your downloads folder. Try to move your downloads to their specific folders before you move on or at least make a point to clean out the Downloads folder at the end of the work week. [ squirming guiltily ]

Creating Custom Wallpaper

Creating and using customized wallpaper designs is a great way to add a personal touch to your desktop and keep you organized. Here are some tips for creating your own custom wallpaper:

1. Choose an image you like or create your own design. Visuals are important to us and colors affect our productivity so keep this in mind when you are creating your wallpaper
2. Open an image editing program. I prefer to use Adobe Illustrator because I have created templates to help save me time when creating bulk wallpapers
3. Set the dimensions to match your screen resolution. I create my wallpapers in HD that is 1920x1080px
4. Adjust the image to cover the artboard or to section you want it to cover. Next you will add any additional elements to the page such as columns and borders to organize your files and keep you focused with To-Do lists.
5. Save the file as a JPEG or PNG.
6. Right-click on your desktop and select "Change Desktop Background."
7. Choose browse and select your custom wallpaper from its saved location. Now you can organize your folders into various locations you’ve created for them. Now it’s time to match the icons to the wallpaper.

Creating Custom Icons

Custom icons are a fun way to personalize your desktop and make it blend in rather than stand out in the wrong way. Here's how you can create your own customized app icons:

1. Choose the image you want to use for your icon. This can be a photo, an image or a graphic in the form of a PNG file.
2. Open an image editing program like Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator.
3. Create a new document with dimensions of 256x256 pixels you can go larger than this if you wish especially if you want to use the design in other ways also, just remember to keep the aspect ratio 1:1 that is to say square.
4. You can now either place your chosen image onto the new document or create the icon from scratch.
5. Save the file as a transparent PNG so that if your image design is not actually square you will get just the image outline and not a square box around the image.
6. Next you will need to convert your image to a [dot] ICO file for Windows App Icons. You can find converters online for free. If you are an Adobe Illustrator user please Vote on this feature request to include an option to export as [dot] ICO files directly from Adobe Illustrator.
7. After you have downloaded your new [Dot] ICO file and moved into its organized folder [ wink-wink ] Right-click on the app or folder you want to customize and select "Properties” or [ Alt+Enter ]
8. Click on the Top Right tab that says Customize and select change icon. Locate your new icon file and apply it. Do this for any remaining icons that you have.

Matching Icons to Your Wallpaper

To create that cohesive look between your custom wallpaper and desktop icons, you will want to create a color palette that compliments your wallpaper while allowing the icons to stand out.

Try choosing a color from your wallpaper that you want to use as your icon color. You can use the color picker tool in Adobe illustrator itself to pick specific colors or you can use color.adobe.com and extract a theme color palette from the wallpaper image.

You can also use the blend tool in Adobe Illustrator to add swatches that blend together.

Create an Editable To-Do list

Now that you can customize your icons on your desktop why not take it one step further and use those Icons to create an editable To-do list on your desktop. I have created a simple number based icon to replace the Folders on my desktop and then I simply rename my "Folders" with the Tasks I am meant to be focusing on.