There ’s a circumstances of information crammed onto food packaging these days , and along with all of the helpful stuff ( like nutritional information and ingredients ) , there ’s also the mysterious , multicolored course of circles or second power that process a very important purpose … for the printer .
bear on to as “ printing machine ’s color blocking ” or “ process dominance patches , ” this storage-battery grid of colour swatch indicates which chromaticity of ink were used to bring about the purpose on the package . The pressman mark these colored circles or squares to determine whether a package conforms to the necessary colour scheme for the product . In the case of any problems , the color blocks let both the human and computerized printer know if a deficiency ( or surplus ) of color caused the issue .
The color block are normally show as circle on most bagged products and square on boxed goods , with the most common being black , cyan , magenta , and yellow , since they ’re the cornerstone of most color produced by printers . If the volume of the parcel is publish in one or two other colors , they ’ll unremarkably move around up in their own blocks ( call “ topographic point colouring material ” ) , too . bag of Cheetos , for example , will almost always have at least one orange pulley , but normally two or more in different hue .

If you do n’t see a set of color block on your grip of chips or box of cookies , you do n’t need to worry . The decision to include this element is an option , not a principle — though most large - graduated table , aggregated - produced products have some variation of color block on their packages . Some companies also crop off the colour blocks during the promotion mental process .
Oh , and if you see the color block , you ’ll probably regain a symbol that looks like the hybridization - hair of a rifle range somewhere on the package , too . These “ register marks ” ( or “ position scrape ” ) are used to ordinate all of the gloss impress on the promotional material — yet another helpful tool for the pressman , but not really of any use to consumer .