A designer did make it! The process you undertook is called design!
I explained that exactly what design is I just lack the skills to do it in illustrator and Photoshop but yes, no one gets it right the first time.
The "designer" happens to not to be human. At that point it just sounds like going to a website template store and scrolling endlessly through options until you find a template you'd say "meh, this will do".
Iteration is a critical part of good design-work, no matter the tool you use to do it. You don’t have to be drawing things by hand to be designing them.