Ask somebody in your field who is really good at TeX for the LaTeX sources of his/her thesis, and use them as templates. Spend as little time as possible thinking about layout and as much as you can about content.

You speak the truth. I really want to avoid that. I do have solid experience with LaTeX and could start right away with it. Considering ConTeXt comes from its clear conceptual advantages. I'm basing the decision on whether someone can point me into a direction and say: "use this, it looks great and you'll be content with it".

You only will have the energy to strive for excellence in layout after you have had the satisfaction of creating content worthy of it.

I did a presentation before with ConTeXt and exactly that was the painful lesson I learned. Thanks for the advice - Tobias