In our last Finder article we looked at some tips for customizing your Desktop pattern and the Dock to help increase you’re productivity. This time we’ll show you how and why custom are the next step in turning the Finder into a true Weapon of Mac Production.

Custom Icons – Not Just Pretty Pictures
One of the most striking things about Mac OS X are the icons. Eye candy, to be sure, but should the production-minded care? You bet!

(For this article’s examples we’ll use icons from the “Aqua Candy Two” collection, downloaded from artist Susumu Yoshida’s web site.)

There are some good reasons Apple put so much effort into the design of these little 128 x 128 pixel works of art. Custom icons are an easy way to create visual cues for special project folders, documents, drives or whatever. They make it simple to pick a particular item out of a crowded window, identify it in the Dock or differentiate it in the Sidebar.
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Even though Mac users are widely diversified in what they do with their computers (business, graphics, audio, video, etc.), there is one thing that we all have in common: the Finder.

For the production-minded, there are plenty of utilities to supplement, modify and sometimes even replace the Finder. We’ll look at the best of those in upcoming articles, but for now we’ll start, from the ground up, with the built-in features and some techniques that will turn the Finder itself into a Weapon of Mac Production.

If you just installed a fresh copy of the OS or created a new user on your system, your screen should look something like this:

(click for full size view)