> Whether or not you want to communicate "in the clearest way possible" is a choice.

This is far from "clearest way possible", it's not even in the middle. This choice impedes communication which makes is less useful, by your definition.

> But only the author/designer can speak to whether the design was successful in it's aims

I find it difficult to believe that the author's aim was to share a story in such way that's unnecessarily harder to consume, by a large portion of people otherwise interested in their thoughts.