Displaying content in different ways I sort of ran into a problem here, for a new project a piece of the homepage can have different layouts.

For example:

-----------------
| N  |    C     |
| E  |    O     |
| W  |    N     |
| S  |    T     |
|    |    E     |
|    |    N     |
|    |    T     |
-----------------


or 

-----------------
|       C       |
|       O       |
|       N       |
|       T       |
|       E       |
|       N       |
|       T       |
-----------------


or

-----------------
|               |
|     NEWS      |
|               |
-----------------


So there are 3 types of layouts, news + content, just content and just news.
What would be the best way to do this? Currently I'm using Panels to build the homepage, this is just a small part of it.

It also would have to be very convenient for the user to switch styles, any ideas for this?
You can use Panels, Display Suite and Context to build a different layout flexible and custom layout in your theme.
You can also build a custom theme with there layouts and switch the layout home page based on context. If you are planning for theme, you can write a subtheme for Omega, a HTML5 base theme, or can you choose the best base theme as per your need.