Using views to control article nodes?

Hi everyone, I need help on how to implement this idea.

I am creating a newpaper/magazine type of website and I have articles. However I currently don't like the layout of the node.tpl.php I have tried to edit the node file to no avail (all the content is being called in $content argument). Therefore would styling the article page in views be another way to work around it?

Also note, I have looked into Panels but the one for Drupal 6 is still in alpha code and is not recommended to be running on a production sites. I plan to have this site up in 2 weeks the latest.

Thanks for any help.