Abstract: Folk art, containing rich culture and symbolic meanings, is the inexhaustible resource of modern designs.In the colleges, more and more importance has been attached to integrating the folk art with the major course teaching. However, in the process of developing local application-oriented universities, folk art factors are not integrated into the visual communication design programs, which causes serious homogenization and greatly restricts the specialized development of the visual communication design teaching. The new requirements of the era are to optimize the program of cultivating talents, enhance the studies of folk art resources, expand the innovative thinking to improve the effectiveness of the visual communication design teaching.

Key words: folk art, local universities, the visual communication design, program of cultivating talents