I think Ben if you want something fairly quickly then it would be better to stay with LxQt. The reason for this is that the current installer Calamares requires the Qt libraries so we have to supply those by default. Since that’s what LxQt needs too it will lead to a smaller iso. Calamares also carries some python overhead as I recall.
TPG came up with a bash based text installer from Lunar Linux which I started to adapt for server installs but it still needs quite a lot of work as well as testing. This installer would allow the use of a basic X server setup that could use one of the more lightweight window managers. With the best will in the world though I can’t see this happening quickly because of the installer development component. There are still quite a few issues to resolve before we have a working normal iso.
Having said that bero has just reported that he has managed to successfully build an Lx4 iso which he will try and boot after walking his dogs