I've seen punch cards where the optical media meant to be illuminated and projected for people to see, was accompanied by punched information for a computer to read. They were both on the same punch card. I want to say the USGS, the patent office, the army, and maybe Bell systems used these at some points?

I think this may be what you remember? I've never seen one where the holes carried a few extra bits of color information though. I do not think that existed on an industrial scale. Was it in a niche children's toy?

Edit: found an image of the ones I was referring to

[–] BartyDeCanter@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago

I finally figured out what it was, though embarrassingly I found out it wasn’t a punchcard, but a colored card with a barcode on the back.

https://hackaday.com/2020/04/27/teardown-vtech-whiz-kid-luggable-computer/