The Display Suite module is a wonderful way of customizing node (and any entity for that matter) templates through a drag-and-drop UI. You'll be amazed at how Display Suite elegantly extends what Drupal core provides site administrators when it comes to displaying entity content.

While not a replacement for the Panels module, Display Suite has clearly been influenced by it, and leverages its ideas in a new way. This presentation will only scratch the surface of what Display Suite is capable of - it will only focus on using it to provide alternate "view modes" for entities' (nodes, users, taxonomy terms, etc...) display pages as well as demonstrating how it can be used to create new layouts (instead of having to create custom theme templates) for the same entities.

Slides: 

Display_Suite.pdf