You mean the start menu? Yeah, all those on the desktop are just shortcuts, most of them are all on the start menu. As far as the designing go, there are many you can look into. For starters, check ou the ones available at www.wincustomize.com and their list of available utilities that do what you want.I've got a desktop with a lot of crap(icons) on it. Is there some kind of freeware program that will help me organize a desk top into like categories with dropdown menus or something
i use object dock.
http://www.stardock.com/products/objectdock/
you can make the docks hidden like the taskbar, so you have complete unobstructive view of your desktop image. i currently have 33 icons on my desktops, but you can't see them until you move your cursor to the edge of the screen (kinda like mac style).