When Branding Ignores Digital, Everyone Pays for It

I’ve spent years working at the intersection of brand and digital, often partnering with branding agencies whose work I genuinely admire. The identity systems are thoughtful, expressive, and beautifully crafted. But when those brands are handed off to digital teams to build websites and e-commerce experiences, the same problems tend to surface again and again.

Designing a brand today without thinking through how it will live on the web creates friction later. Not because the work is bad, but because digital has its own rules. And when those rules are ignored early, teams end up solving avoidable problems downstream.

These are the most common mistakes I see when brands are built without digital in mind.

Choosing fonts that cannot be used on the web

I have seen entire brands built around typefaces that simply do not have a web font or a usable digital license. They look beautiful in decks and printed materials, but they cannot legally or technically be used online. If a font cannot live in a browser, it should not be foundational to a modern brand.

Choosing fonts that are cost prohibitive at scale

Even when a web font exists, licensing is often tied to monthly page views. For growing brands, this can become incredibly expensive very quickly. This is why many large companies either invest in proprietary typefaces or choose high quality open or widely licensed fonts that scale without surprise costs. Picking a font because it looks good without thinking about how it will be paid for is a mistake.

Ignoring accessibility and color contrast

I have personally received brand guidelines that recommend white text on yellow backgrounds. While this may look nice in a static brand book, it is extremely difficult to read on mobile devices and often fails basic accessibility standards. Digital design has to account for legibility, contrast, and real world usage, not just aesthetics.

Designing gradients without understanding how they render on the web

Gradients can look smooth and refined in print or static mockups. On the web, they can appear banded, uneven, or inconsistent across devices and browsers. When gradients are core to a brand, designers need to specify how they should behave digitally and what happens when they do not render perfectly.

Providing conceptual imagery without practical guidance

Brand guidelines often include striking, avant-garde imagery, but fail to address the basics. How should product photography be handled. How should instructional or how-it-works imagery look. On the web, users scan quickly. They need to understand what a product is and what it does almost immediately. Without guidance here, digital teams are left guessing.

Over-reliance on all-caps, ultra-wide headline styles

All-caps headlines in wide typefaces can look bold and editorial. The problem is that they completely fall apart once headlines extend beyond three to five words. I have been told more than once that we should simply shorten headlines to accommodate the brand system. That is backwards. Clarity for the user matters more than rigid aesthetic rules. Headlines exist to communicate. They cannot always be reduced to a few words just to preserve a visual style. A brand system should support communication, not constrain it.

If you are building brands today, it is worth remembering where they will actually live. Not just on packaging or in lookbooks, but on phones, in checkout flows, and inside real user journeys. Designing with digital in mind from day one is not a compromise. It is what makes a brand functional, scalable, and truly modern.