On August 27, 2026, Presses Universitaires de France (PUF) will publish The Vocabulary of Design, co-edited by Stéphane Vial, professor at the School of Design at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), and Éric Kavanagh, professor at the School of Design at Université Laval.
The Vocabulary of Design brings together almost 100 contributors, including roughly 20 experts from UQAM’s School of Design, reflecting a collaboration between French-speaking design researchers and practitioners across the Francophone world.
The book serves as a reference tool, an editorial project, and a theoretical exploration that provides a comprehensive view of the design discipline while strengthening its internal coherence. Written by the community, it is aimed at researchers, practitioners, educators, and students as well as all those who wish to clarify concepts, grasp nuances, and better understand the discussions surrounding design.
Spanning 600 pages and featuring 330 entries covering the concepts, methods, practices, and contemporary issues shaping design today, the book is the most comprehensive scholarly dictionary of design ever published in French.
“At a time when design extends from objects to services, from interfaces to public policy, the discipline is evolving and diversifying at an unprecedented pace,” said Vial. “The Vocabulary of Design stands as one of the most ambitious French-language publishing projects in the field. Intended to become an essential reference work, it provides readers with the conceptual language of design, helping them better understand the transformations taking place across the discipline and its many areas of practice.”
The following excerpt has been translated from the original French text.
“The idea for The Vocabulary of Design first emerged in the fall of 2012, shortly after Stéphane Vial published the first edition of his Short Treatise on Design. Inspired by the long-standing tradition of vocabulary reference works published by Presses Universitaires de France—including Lalande’s Technical and Critical Vocabulary of Philosophy, Laplanche and Pontalis’s The Language of Psychoanalysis, and Souriau’s Vocabulary of Aesthetics—Vial envisioned creating a comparable reference work for the field of design.”
For more information, or to read the full excerpt, click here.
