What is the cutting edge way/technology to separate design and backend developement?

I am currently editing my friends smarty views which Is supposed to be about making designers and backend people separated and happy. Opening templates in a WYSIWYG does not seem doable, and I am moving divs around currently manually with entering pixel offsets. This does not seem cutting edge. I am going to be hiring designers and backend people and want to implement an architecture which is the simplest and most efficient.

If i can use the existing smarty backend in a more userfriendly / wysiwig way great, if not, what would you recommend?

Todd