Linear codes with a few weights have many nice applications including combinatorial design, distributed storage system, secret sharing schemes and so on. In this paper, we construct two families of linear codes with a few weights based on special polynomials over finite fields. The first family of linear codes are extended primitive cyclic codes which are affine-invariant. The second family of linear codes are reducible cyclic codes. The parameters of these codes and their duals are determined. As the first application, we prove that these two families of linear codes hold $t$-designs, where $t=2,3$. As the second application, the minimum localities of the codes are also determined and optimal locally recoverable codes are derived.