I think you miss the point on what a Design Pattern is.
In software engineering, a design pattern is a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design.
So design patterns are just a formal language to define common ways to solve software engineering problems. I would think most people are using design patterns without knowing that they are. So these common solutions to software problems can date back a long way, they just hadn't come up with a formal language to describe what they where doing.
I think design patterns are important because they teach you the command ways to solve the problems in the areas that design patterns apply to.
