I agree that the people hub is mess, but I'd like to suggest that it's new and is very unfinished. (If it's finished, maybe we are, too.
I don't like the circular contact buttons, but I think that they're trying to jump on a current design trend (Skype, Google+, etc.). App bar buttons were round because it facilitated smoothly rotating them when the phone switched from portrait to landscape. I think that the new toggle design is here to stay and that it's moving to the left, which might have been necessitated by the need to support large screens where the right-aligned graphic would be too far from the text to which it applies. The new wireframe icons are a mess for exactly the reasons that you enumerated. Filled solids is easier to read than the wireframe version, but might look overwhelming at large sizes on desktops.
I'm hoping that the lack of animation and the other app bar visual deficiencies are the result of this being an early build. Sadly, I think that the smaller popup context menus are the final deliverable so that the phone UI matches the tablet/laptop/desktop design. The fonts and design on popup messages is probably just a mistake that will be soon fixed.
Sadly, the addition of colors is probably here to stay. Color isn't bad, but the seemingly indiscriminate application of multiple colors is probably sticking around. Note how many folks asked for the ability to individually color tiles. That wild colors of the Windows 8 start screen is one of the things that weakens it for my uses. The colors overpower the content that the tiles are trying to convey. Still, if you want to decorate your PC instead of getting information from it, per-tile customizable colors is what you need.
Controls at the top and those without text labels also appear to be part of the new Microsoft Design Language 2.0. Some of this is likely to accommodate a range of device sizes; some of it may be to make it easier for brand new users to acclimate faster. (I'm sympathetic to this as I've seen users pick up a Windows phone, note that the text was cut off, put it down, and move on. Microsoft HAS to hold such folks for more than 30 seconds to generate sales.)