Regions and Page Layouts
You can do it by creating templates for different types of pages.

e.g. If you have different layouts for front page, you can create page--front.tpl.php.
It will work for front page only, for rest of the pages page.tpl.php will work.

If further you have different layouts for page types, e.g a normal layout for pages and different layouts for article type of pages then you can create two types of tpl.


node--article.php, if you have the same header and footer content and just content part design is different.
page--article.php (page–[node-type].tpl.php), Here you can customize the content part as well as different layout for header and footer part.


Also there will a customization option in the manage display part of the content type.

Hope it will help you.