I have a box of medications for a throat pain and there is a total of five small circles. Four of them are the perfect representation of CMYK colors, so cyan, magenta, yellow and black. The fifth one is a shade of green that’s used for the text on the white paper box. The names of the four CMYK colors are also written on the box in their respective colors.
Not every medication box seems to have these colors. But yesterday I threw away an empty paper box of cough meds, that also had CMYK colored circles printed on it.
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As noted, these are alignment marks for the various ink colors. CMYK everybody knows about. But you often see one or several other colors. These are specific inks, called “spot colors”, which are used so that the key “trade dress” features on the packaging are rendered accurately every time. Starbucks’ green is a good example.
This is important for marketing / branding reasons, but also for legal reasons. Your “registered trademarks” actually precisely specify the colors in the registration documents, and being sloppy about that is a good way to lose your trademark protection.
Also some spot colors are used for effects you cannot get with CMYK at all. Shiny “gold foil” is a popular example.
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