OK Computer - Title and Artwork

Title and Artwork

"OK Computer" was the original title for the song "Palo Alto", which had been considered for inclusion on the album. Although the song was abandoned, its first title stuck with the band; according to Jonny Greenwood, " started attaching itself and creating all these weird resonances with what we were trying to do." Yorke said it "refers to embracing the future, it refers to being terrified of the future, of our future, of everyone else's. It's to do with standing in a room where all these appliances are going off and all these machines and computers and so on ... and the sound it makes." Yorke described the title as "a really resigned, terrified phrase", to him similar to the Coca-Cola advertisement "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing". Wired writer Leander Kahney suggests that it is a homage to Macintosh computers, as "The Mac's built-in speech recognition software responds to the command 'OK Computer,' as an alternative to hitting an OK button onscreen." Other titles considered were Ones and Zeroes—a reference to the binary numeral system—and Your Home May Be at Risk If You Do Not Keep Up Payments.

The album's artwork is a collage of images and text created by Stanley Donwood and Yorke, credited under the pseudonym "The White Chocolate Farm". Donwood was commissioned by Yorke to work on a visual diary alongside the recording sessions. Yorke explained, "If I'm shown some kind of visual representation of the music, only then do I feel confident. Up until that point, I'm a bit of a whirlwind." The colour palette is predominantly white and blue, according to Donwood, the result of "trying to make something the color of bleached bone." Used twice on the artwork, once in the booklet and once on the compact disc itself, is the image of two stick figures shaking hands. Yorke explained the image as emblematic of exploitation, saying, "Someone's being sold something they don't really want, and someone's being friendly because they're trying to sell something. That's what it means to me." Explaining the artwork's themes, Yorke said, "It's quite sad, and quite funny as well. All the artwork and so on ... It was all the things that I hadn't said in the songs."

Visual motifs in the artwork include motorways, aeroplanes, families with children, corporate logos and cityscapes. The words "Lost Child" feature prominently on the cover, and the booklet artwork contains phrases in the constructed language Esperanto and health-related instructions in both English and Greek. The use of disconnected phrases led a critic for Uncut to say, "The non-sequiturs created an effect akin to being lifestyle-coached by a lunatic." White scribbles, Donwood's method of correcting mistakes rather than using the computer function undo, are present everywhere in the collages. The liner notes contain the full lyrics, rendered with atypical syntax, alternate spelling and small annotations. The lyrics are also arranged and spaced in shapes that resemble hidden images. In keeping with the band's then emergent anti-corporate stance, the production credits contain the ironic copyright notice "Lyrics reproduced by kind permission even though we wrote them."