Design notes fail in a specific way. The useful material is visual — a screenshot, a colour, a layout that solved a problem you will hit again — and text-first apps turn it into a link you never open. Meanwhile the actual thinking happens across a whiteboard, and whiteboards are terrible archives.
So the honest answer is a split, not a single app: something spatial for working things out, something durable for what you concluded, and Figma for anything that belongs next to the file.
At a glance
| What you're doing | Use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Collecting visual reference | Milanote or Pinterest | Boards, images first, arrangeable |
| Thinking spatially, alone | Freeform or FigJam | Infinite canvas, low ceremony |
| Workshops and team ideation | FigJam or Miro | Built for many cursors |
| Design decisions and rationale | Notion or Obsidian | Text you can find in two years |
| Design system documentation | Notion, or your system's own docs | Structure, tables, sharing |
| Quick capture anywhere | A fast phone notes app | Two seconds, or it's lost |
Milanote: reference boards
Milanote is the closest thing to a purpose-built notes app for visual work. Boards of images, notes, links and files, arranged spatially, nested into sub-boards. It fits the way moodboards and early concept work actually behave, and it is far better at this than a Notion gallery view.
Where it falls short: it is a collection tool, not a thinking tool. Boards accumulate quickly and get revisited rarely, and search across a large account is weaker than text-first apps. It is also another subscription for something Figma partly covers.
Freeform and FigJam: spatial thinking
Freeform is free on Apple devices, opens instantly, and is genuinely good for sketching a flow or arranging ideas with an Apple Pencil. Its weakness is that it is an island — no structure, no links, poor search, and boards vanish from memory a week later.
FigJam wins when others are involved, and when the output feeds a Figma file. For workshops, affinity mapping and early flows it is the natural choice, because it is already where the work lands.
Neither is an archive. Treat both as scratch space and move conclusions elsewhere — the same discipline as fleeting notes.
Notion or Obsidian: the decisions
This is the layer designers most often skip and most need.
The valuable artefact from a design project is rarely the moodboard. It is: why we chose this, what we tried, what the constraint was, what the research said. That is text, it is findable, and it is what you will want when the same argument comes round again in eighteen months — or when someone asks why the checkout works the way it does.
Notion suits teams: shareable, structured, good tables for decision logs and research summaries. Obsidian suits individuals building a long-term body of craft knowledge, with links between principles, patterns and projects — see evergreen notes.
The habit worth building is one short note per meaningful decision: the problem, the options, the choice, the reason. Ten lines. See how to keep a work journal.
What belongs in Figma instead
Be strict about this, because scattering is the real problem. Anything that is about a specific file should live in the file: component usage notes, spec annotations, open questions on a frame. A note about a screen, kept in a different app, will not be found by the next person to open the screen — or by you.
Reserve your notes app for things that outlive the file: principles, research findings, decision rationale, and craft knowledge.
The two failure modes
A graveyard of inspiration. Hundreds of saved screenshots nobody revisits. Saving something delivers the feeling of having learned from it at a fraction of the cost — the collector's fallacy. The fix is small: when you save a reference, add one line saying what it solves. Untagged visual reference is nearly unsearchable, and the line is what makes it retrievable later.
Tool sprawl. Milanote, Freeform, FigJam, Notion, Apple Notes, a physical sketchbook, and no rule about which. Write the rule down once, even if it is crude. Sprawl costs more than any tool choice.
Where ClairMind fits
ClairMind is a fast, private, phone-first notes app with AI over your own notes. Its role in a design kit is capture: the idea that arrives away from the desk, the critique you want to remember, the phrase from a user interview. Those are the notes most likely to be lost, and a whiteboard tool cannot catch them.
It is not a canvas and it will not replace FigJam or Milanote for visual arrangement. It is where the thought lands before it reaches either, and it is where the reasoning stays findable afterwards. See also the best notes app for mind mapping.
The minimum viable setup
Freeform or FigJam for thinking. One text note per project holding decisions and reasons. A phone app for capture. Reference in whatever board tool you already use, each item with a one-line "what this solves."
That covers the actual jobs, and it is three tools rather than six.
More in best notes app for work, sketchnoting, and best notes apps.