The template > slot > ad mental model is engrained both in advertisers, planners and web sites. Providing space for ads needs to be broadened into multiple spaces for one ad concept. This requires closer collaboration between advertisers and web sites, designers and marketeers and sales teams.

It’s clear that Mark has gotten his hands dirty working on a solution, and I like his idea for selling slot packages rather than single spaces. I could even see that instead of sending out the typical PDF diagram of ad slots and sizes, sales teams could point people to an actual responsive layout/template so they could see how their ad resizes and relocates within the site hierarchy at various widths.

What happens if ads become fluid and text is designed into the images or movies? Readability will certainly suffer, as will clicks. I wonder if advocating a similar image + HTML text approach much like The Deck or Fusion Ads would be a possibility. That may be a lot to ask, but if things need to be redefined, let us not be short-sighted.

Video made responsive / fluid thanks to FitVids.js

Case in point: I recently replaced Futura served by an unnamed service with the relatively new Futura PT from ParaType served via Typekit. There was a significant improvement in tracking as well as rendering. Here’s a short, non-comprehensive list of fonts I’d love to put on a webpage.

I love House Industries. Neutraface & United have both been long time favorites of mine, recently used here, here and here. Happily, the FAQ on their site mentions that a subset of the collection will be available in October of 2011.

Another foundry that is working to make their fonts available is Hoefler & Frere-Jones. I love Tungsten but am particularly interested in using Vitesse & Forza for both headline and paragraph text.

Archive type makes me giddy, and their Archive Steeler looks fantastic on Andy McMillan, Jez Burrows, and Carolyn Wood’s latest project, The Manual. I also like Archive Antique Extended.

Ardoise from Typofonderie is a workhorse. Taking all the styles, widths and weights into account, you’ve got 45 options in the family.  I also quite like Le Monde Courrier, which is already a web font.

Stag, another workhorse, is a unique slab serif with lots of companion families: sans, dot stencil, and sans-rounded. I dig them all.

Mark Simonson created Proxima Nova, a web font we use on the Paravel website. He also created a really nice script font called Lakeside. There’s something about it that just really jives with me, especially the alternate, extra-large titling caps.

Dispatch from Font Bureau comes in 16 styles, and I bet I could find a use for all of them starting with Extended Bold.

Now DesignSwap is open to everyone.  We’ve swapped the sign up list for an open invitation, and encourage you to partner up & get to designing! To get all the details check out our info page.  Viva La Swap!