If you’re using your Mac in public, you might not want everybody to see the mess on your desktop! You can run the following command that will hide the icons from you desktop.
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false
Restart Finder with the following command:
killall Finder
The files located on the desktop will still be accessible by using Finder to browse to your Desktop folder.
To restore your desktop:
defaults delete com.apple.finder CreateDesktop
Restart Finder.