The modernization of Russia's higher education, switching higher schools from the formation of the students' narrow special professional knowledge, skills and abilities to meta-subject, social-personal results, is aimed at the rise of its quality and competability on the basis of the fundamentality preservation and agreement with present-day needs of the personality, society and state. At present, achieving the unity of aim, content and process parameters of the educational process can be procured by the competential approach, which directs not on the growth of information scope in different object spheres but on the motivation to seek independent solutions in unfamiliar situations. In the Federal State Educational Standard of the higher professional education of the third generation in the matter of item 072500.62 - Design - a number of general cultural and professional competences are defined, among which a significant role is given to «respectful and careful consideration of historic heritage and culture traditions, tolerant perception of social and cultural differences». In fact, the professional training of a modern designer signifies studies into folk art and trade design, the realization of their ethnic peculiarity, the teaching of methods of creative transformation of art traditions in present-day highly technological production (3). Such competences are hard to form without resorting to ethnic ornament with its sign-symbolic structure.

In the process of mastering general culture competences, a student of design joins in the historical heritage and cultural traditions of his people and the peoples among which he is formed as a personality. This process is particularly efficient in the multi-cultural environment of the multi-ethnic region, where ethnic cultures retain their originality. Thus, the Orenburg Region is the area of co-existence of two world religions and two world cultures which don't abuse each other. It possesses infinite resources of protodesign, which in its time determined the trend of forming material culture of all its peoples (2). The importance of including historical and ethno-cultural information in the design education is also based on the variability of the ethnic decorative applied art and its sign-symbolic images. The ethnic ornament based on the culture traditions (world outlook, esthetics) marks its value-esthetic attitude to the surrounding world in signs and symbols. It is common knowledge that the ornament either involves abstract forms or employs some real motives. A number of motives and their compositional combinations are fundamental in the expression of ancient world ornamentics - the circle, the cross and the square. The circle - infinite line - in the art of different peoples symbolizes unity and eternity, life and Earth, a wheel and motion. It is a sign of the Absolute and perfection. In the stylization of ornamental compositions the circle motion is often employed - closing, return to the initial point. The square, a figure made of equally long lines, signifies the limitation of the surface (Earth, objects). It is a symbol of constancy, peace, stability. The cross - a sign of signs - (crossing lines) for most peoples means life and protection.

The same forms are basic in the design-projection of different objects: the circle - one of the most promising symbols in modern design, archetypical and possessing a perfect form, it is fit for perception and projecting (1); squares (and nets) as graphic elements in the system of visual conveyance of information are characterized by inner rationality, which makes them ideal objects reflecting such notions as logic and order; cross-like forms accentuate balance and stability. The ways of harmonizing forms, dimensions, plastics, color, factures employed in the ethnic ornament are able to enrich the basis of professional training of students of design.

On the whole, the simplicity and laconism of style required at the creation of logotype, trade mark, an object of material culture, are, in fact, often realized in the forms of ethnic ornament and subsequently interpret them. At this, sign-symbolic images of decorative ornamental compositions employed in folk art become the object of creative interpretation by a student of design.

Thus, the ability to find possible methods of harmonizing forms, structures, complexes and systems is formed in the process of the profound studies of signs and symbols of ethnoculture. Today's students of design are on the way of active searches of new roads to the development of classical trends. They are learning to make new design-forms on the basis of sign-symbolic images of ethnical ornament.

2. Rusakova T.G., Breusova T.A. The esthetic developing environment of the educational establishment in the multi-ethnic region: components, functions, test criteria. // Vestnik Orenburgskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. 2011, #9. pp.125-129.

3. Fursa O. The patterns of professional training of designers. http://gisap.eu/ru/node/25385.