Craigslist redesigns

It’s one of the largest sites around. Everybody knows and loves what Craigslist does. But most designers will tell you they don’t like how Craigslist looks.

Here’s the current site, in all its textual, link-happy glory:

In 2004, Charlie Park thought he’d try a redesign. He certainly wasn’t the first to think about it, but his is the earliest I could find. Here’s what he came up with:

The blues went to red and the site gained a little more white space breathing room.

Then about a year ago, a panel at the South by Southwest Interactive conference made a splash with this:

It has even more white space, slightly bigger fonts, and a happier blue link color.

Christian Montoya started with the SXSW redesign, shrank the header and added a whole lot of thin grey lines or borders:

Matt Haughey also worked off the SXSW redesign. Mainly, he thinks “the top bar is all wrong:”

It’s interesting that while all these redesigns attempt to make Craigslist look and feel differently, none really attacked on the information clutter. Of course, that may be because there isn’t a much simpler front page for Craigslist without increasing the number of times their users have to click.

Could Craigslist be a better experience if it looked better or acted differently? Does that mean they should go for it?

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? The biggest reason that Craigslist will probably never consider any of these–or their own–redesigns is that they don’t really need to.

Did I miss any? Let me know if you know of any other Craigslist redesigns.