There are a ton of tools like Notion, Obsidian, Logseq, etc. that are all focused on primarily text/document first.
I've been spending a lot of time doing both design work and doing more creative/artistic fun stuff, but I also do a lot of reading and note taking and am hoping to find a tool that can bring all of this into one tool.
There are a lot of visual infinite canvas type tools like Miro, Milanote, Muse, etc. that are great for dumping images, doodling on the canvas, and organizing things however you want.
And there seem to be some tools somewhere in the middle, like Scrintal (terrible name lol) and Heptabase. There are some others, though they seem fairly anemic in terms of features and are more just another notion-like tool but you can put the notes on a canvas.
I guess the short of it is that I don't know exactly what I'm looking for and I'm hoping that some others here have found a nice solution for their own note taking/knowledge dumping which works in a visual way.
I like using my iPad with the concept app for doodling but it is pretty much an info dump as finding anything again is a pain.
Edit, as that didn't really answer the question: no, I don't have any digital visual note taking app I prefer. I use a paper notebook for that, because handwriting and sketching is engaging and I find I remember better what I was thinking at the time.
When I need to collaborate I usually set up a Figjam board though.
[1] https://www.zengobi.com/curio
A specific use I had was with importing PDFs (like, say, a textbook chapter) and marking up the chapter, tossing blank pages after exercise sections and writing out my solutions/answers or directly marking the pages. IIRC, Freeform would let you import a document like a PDF but not display it (or specific pages from it) within the Freeform document itself, instead it was a linked file. I'll have to try again but haven't had much need for this recently.
EDIT: At least on iPhone, it's the same behavior. It's attached so I can open the PDF but not embedded in a way where I can directly mark it up within the larger Freeform document. I have to open the attached file to mark it up and can't just display (and then markup) selected pages.
But to keep a similar system between work and personal I used Obsidan + Excalidraw (inside obsidian). IMO it gives the best of both worlds.
I loved both of your recommendations thank you! xD