How to make a custom frontpage layout?

I am trying to figure out the easiest way for having a custom frontpage layout. so I can create a workflow for my designers.

As this time I know there are different ways to achieve this:

1. Using if ($is_front) or if (!$is_front) conditionals in the page.tpl.php for including or excluding code in the frontpage
(i.e. for excluding $content of the front page), blocks can be configured to be showed only in the page

2. Using the page theme module, 1 theme for the homepage and 1 theme for the rest of the pages. But that could mean duplicated code like CSS or javascript and duplicated maintenance.

3. Using panels? I think is usefull only for adding columns layout for a news website.

4. Using Front Page module, but the options are: templated or untemplated, but what happens if I want to use the template but exclude some elements like $content , $breadcrump, $title,some blocks etc...

So at this point I am using #1 for my themes, but I want to establish what could be the best way for doing achieve this custom layout, hopefully using just a frontend configuration so the designers don't have to deal with php.

Please tell me what approach do you use for layout your home pages :)

Thanks.