Jessica Helfand at DesignObserver has written on The Ovalization of The American Mind.

One can imagine buttons being scaled to the oval circumference of an average adult fingertip, but recently it seems that the propensity for ovals has resulted in a morphologically compromised landscape of soft shapes and rounded edges. And nowhere is this more noticeable than in cars, which (with a few exceptions) have enthusiastically embraced everything rounded: fenders, dashboards, you name it. While I'm not advocating a market for squared-off odometers, it is difficult to find a car these days that doesn't look like a cartoon.

Ms. Jen echos: it is difficult to find a website these days that doesn't look like a cartoon.

While Ms. Helfand uses contemporary car and thornamental design to illustrate her points, my mind kept wandering to thoughts of the ovalization of web design. While most of the current crop of Web 2.0 web design is keeping within the ideals of geometric modernism and avoiding thornamental-ism, the oval has landed and many sites have the stylized appearance of a darkly lit neon cartoon.

I do like that designers are breaking out of the box, even ovalizing their box model, but when a web design trend takes off it really takes off and the oval, rounded cornered, neon bevel is in full flight.