What Do Those Colored Circles On Chip Bags Really Mean?

The packaging of our favorite foods is so full of symbols and color coding that we may look past them because we just want to get to the snacks inside. Chips are no exception. We may have noticed those colorful little circles on our chip bags and then immediately went back to eating our chips.

However, the circles typically found on the backs of bags of chips do have a purpose. They may not indicate when the chips were made or whether the bag is recyclable, but they tell the printers a significant amount of information about which colors to use for each type of chip bag. They even have names that allude to their purpose: "printer's color blocks" and "process control patches." You can silently thank these patches (and the chip bag printers who read them) for the fact that your bag of Cheetos is the same shade of orange every time.

Printers' color blocks help chip bag manufacturers ensure the colors of each bag match the standard package colors for each type of chip. While many printers use only four hues, black, yellow, magenta, and cyan, others have a few extra colors.

This is where those circles come in. Printers compare ink to the colored circles on your chip bags to make sure that they're consistently using the correct colors. Not every bag will have the same number of color blocks, though. Each bag uses a different number of colors in the printing process. If a bag is primarily one or two specific colors, though, you can bet that they'll show up in those little circles on the bottom of your bag. This method helps printers make sure that bag colors for chips are globally unified, too. Although the flavor names for certain chips may vary slightly by country, if your bag of Doritos is a deep red, you'll get the same flavor in any region that sells them. Thanks to those colored circles, you don't have to pay much attention if you know which colors correspond to your favorite chips.

While colors are standardized across chip brands, not every brand uses printers' color blocks. There's no law saying that chip brands must use color blocks, but most of them do because they're so useful in color matching.

The same goes for other food products as well. Although printers use colored shapes on packaging in much the same way, not every product with color blocks contains colored circles. You'll find colored circles on any bagged goods with printers' color blocks, but boxed foods with color markings will usually have colorful squares instead of circles. Regardless of the specific shape on your food's packaging, though, you don't have to pay much attention to the printer's color blocks. Those colored shapes aren't necessarily for you, but thanks to the way they standardize packaging colors, they can help you choose chips and other snacks in a flash.