I'm a programmer and a shitty designer. While I can get 'minified'/simplified designs, I could never (at least not without a lot more practice) get to the point

I'm a programmer and a shitty designer. While I can get 'minified'/simplified designs, I could never (at least not without a lot more practice) get to the point where I'm creating beautiful works of art out of my UI. Sometimes I see designs that are just so fantastic - this has happened so many times in history that those designs become fads to standards and then 'old' (see Flat UI). I think a designer's job is equally hard, and when there is no innovation or problem solving (you're not creating something unique - following the fad?) then it's along the same lines of using pre-existing software and making only small changes to it to make it useable for you (Wordpress plugins and themes). TL;DR: Good designers who create new or unique works are different from designers who follow the trends and make similar/copy-cat designs. Just as a programmer who uses pre-existing software is different from someone who is building one from scratch.