Icon shortcuts

I am new to Mac, and have been trying to find a way (if any) to assign a shortcut to my desktop icons, and to change the appearence, so far, can't, Any help appreciated.

In the Mac OS, what you know as a shortcut is called an alias. Highlight the icon, select Make Alias from the File menu or use the keyboard shortcut: Command-M. You can change the name of the alias to anything you want and it will still work. The alias icon will have a semi-circular arrow at the bottom.

To change an icon's appearance, use Copy to "load" the new icon. Highlight the one you want to change and select Get Info from the File menu. Click on the icon in that window and use Paste.

Correction to the above

The keyboard shortcut for Make Alias is Command-L

The shortcut for a faulty memory (mine) must be Cmd-M