I did, not because I want the bounty, but because I think it would be great to have a better looking website asap with more explanation about why darkcoin is something to get excited about. But now I see from your process above it was probably a waste of time.
Sorry to rant, and I don't mean any disrespect, but it would probably be good to have tasks stepped out by priority so that people aren't doing unnecessary work.
Not at all -- I appreciate your view. I would gladly take an interim design just to help get the new site launched, even if the design isn't final. I would hate to see work wasted.
To clarify -- those bounties were written up some time ago when we had to get a whole bunch of things done quickly and didn't have the luxury of a carefully planned branding & design schedule. My view of how I see our branding evolving to the finalised version is an ideal from a best practices perspective and it may not happen that neatly in practice. So if a really nice WP theme comes along, that might end up informing the logo design (for example). We have to be flexible due to the constraints we're under.