That's because you had a very limited definition of what design is. Design is not just how it looks, it is much more about how it works (and in a highly visual media like the web, how it looks is of course a big part of that).

Edit to add some nuance: I didn't mean to take this out on you personally. Your limited definition of what "design" as "visual design" is actually fairly pervasive these days and as a (non visual) designer this bothers me to no end. I'm blaming the use of design as a noun for this. People want to have something that is "design", whatever that means. Design, however, is also a verb. It is the process of shaping a product to fit its users' needs. For software, that means figuring out what it should and shouldn't do, how it should do it, how to organise information, what language (visual and verbal) to use and testing, testing, testing. To do this right, you need more than just a talented artist that can make a pretty picture.

Design IS a broad term. There is architectural design, industrial design and user interface design for example. What you are describing is generally called visual design. Quite contrary to what you argued, many people, including Steve Jobs, have emphasized that design is much more than visual design.

Considering which buttons your site needs, and where to place them, is arguably more "design" than the font of the text on them.

"Design" is any sort of intentional non-obvious, non-arbitrary choice made in the process of creation, as contrasted against using whatever defaults come from the environment and tools at hand.