The career development path in art and design goes through personal awareness of the abundance of differences between cultural communities. The preservation and revival of local traditions is an important factor and provides a basis for conceiving an original creative product that is interesting and recognizable to the cultural industry worldwide. Learning to respect cultural and historical heritage is a fundamental stage in the education and maturation of a contemporary artist. The apprehension and interpretation of the Bulgarian folklore ornament by students and professional designers is an efficient approach towards realization of their individual creative pursuits in the form of sustainable practices. This study examines the Bulgarian embroidery patterns as a means of visual communication in the past and interprets it through the prism of graphic design. The aim is to distinguish communication practices that are common to tradition and modern times and to draw conclusions about the presence of inherited visual, semantic and plastic characteristics and the possibilities to enrich modern graphic expression.