How ‘Dopamine Design’ took over your TikTok feed—and then moved to store shelves

Bright colors, bold fonts, and eye-popping patterns are psychological triggers, engineered to light up your brain’s pleasure centers like a well-timed notification.

There’s a seismic semiotic shift happening in the grocery aisle. It’s bold, bright, and impossible to ignore. This is Dopamine Design, a packaging aesthetic that’s equally at home in the thumb stopping, scrolling, swiping world of TikTok as it is in your kitchen cupboard. The playbook here borrows the rules of social too; the aim is to create a brand that at a glance evokes fun and instant gratification.