What I have found as a designer/developer is that usability trumps design, and users I have worked with prefer having large, readable text and buttons as well as plenty of white space. 90% of what a web design should be is about the content, not the decoration. Yeah, it might look cool having 10 point text everywhere on menus etc in a highly compressed layout using every available pixel etc, except when you get to be over a certain age and need a magnifying glass to see it (I have great eyesight and prefer big text). I now often use 17pt text just for the body text alone and have scaled up other elements to suit. I do not think this is a negative trend.