Design is hard, so doing variations on a theme, or formulaic processes to get to a point where you say "I like it, it feels right, and it looks good" is a success. If you can repeat a process like the OP lays out, that's a strong foundation to build a website on.
The identity part comes from the divergence from baseline, and having a good foundation lets you experiment and "craft" easily. Nobody is gonna get a knockout web design in 30 minutes following a tutorial, but you might spend a week or three building on what you do in that first 30 minutes to achieve something unique and stellar.
Its like how everything was flat for a bit and now my phone icons are slowly drifting back to gradients
One trend people probably have noticed is that many brands over the last decade went from a script or serif font to a san-serif.
People also hate "corporate memphis" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Memphis) which has been a trend for a while (probably on the way out but still used heavily).
There aren't a lot of unique brands out there, and if they have some kind of success they're not likely to be unique for long.