Last Updated: February 11, 2026 1:12 PM (EST)

An opinionated design philosophy to developing a Notion workspace, by Wildenfree Tech.

There are several recurring design choices that we implement across any build we participate in. It is opinionated in that it implements recurring structures, naming conventions & symbol usage in such a way that assumes a pattern of use, while also not limiting the way you may choose to incorporate individual Dashboards.

The direction we have chosen for this is complementary to any method your organization might take for implementing your dashboards & custom aggregation pages for the front-end, day-to-day use of your system — such as the Perspective Method, designed by a fellow Notion Certified Consultant, Josh Redd of NotionState, which focuses on creating a cohesive experience while navigating around custom pages & Dashboards.

Our method, emphasizes the organization & coordinating of the backend — the structure of the source databases & data sources themselves, navigation between them, how they are stored, customized layouts, clarity of the Workspace, functional aestheticism & overall baseline utility & sensibility.

This document will help to explain our choices & why we believe they will help you take better advantage of Notion overall.

Table of Contents

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Icons, Colors & Emojis

For visibility & ease of navigation.

Across any of our systems, we use icons, colors & emojis very deliberately, for quicker visual identification & pattern recognition. The accompanying video below is a great supplement to express the value in these tools for nonverbal communication.

<aside> <img src="/icons/circle-alternate_blue.svg" alt="/icons/circle-alternate_blue.svg" width="40px" />

COLOR will help unify databases & pages that are closely related by category, type or business segment. This visibility will help you easily correlate which business segment its connected.

• For example: databases related to Music, might all share the color blue, while databases related to People, might share the color green.

</aside>

<aside> <img src="/icons/key_lightgray.svg" alt="/icons/key_lightgray.svg" width="40px" />

ICONS will help visually indicate related databases, pages, properties & tabbed views. This is especially helpful for relation properties & tabbed views. Familiarizing yourself with the icons assigned to your Databases will help you better identify & navigate

• Icons will consistently represent what they symbolize, so a Target icon referencing Projects, will always represent Projects in the workspace implementation whenever visible. </aside>

<aside> <img src="/icons/emoji-grinning_yellow.svg" alt="/icons/emoji-grinning_yellow.svg" width="40px" />

EMOJIS are used primarily for Databases, as well as in any space where Notion’s native icons aren’t as easily accessible, and for when we need to visually call something out.

• Emojis are very helpful in database description navigations reviewed in the next section. </aside>

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA-fYu1urMw&ab_channel=DamsonCloud