The design of adhesively bonded joints is a quite difficult task, due to the stress singularity that arises at the edges of the adhesive adjacent to the loaded substrate. This stress singularity makes any design approach based on elastic stress analysis inconvenient. A more convenient design tool for an adhesive joint should be based on its mode of failure. Most of the adhesive joints fail at the adhesive/adherend interface or very close to it in the adhesive layer. Therefore, a fracture theory such as linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) can be used to analyse the failure of an adhesive joint. In this paper, the design of a single lap joint using a fracture mechanics parameter, i.e. the strain energy release rate (SERR), is discussed. The SERR is extracted from a finite element model using Irwin's virtual crack closure integral. A design equation relating the lap length to the adherend thickness through some design parameters is derived.