Arabic Graffiti

The first book to survey the meeting of Arabic script with graffiti writing and street art, edited by the German graffiti writer and publisher Don Karl and the Lebanese type designer Pascal Zoghbi.

Arabic Graffiti sets out without regional borders: its artists, writers and typographers work in Beirut, Bahrain, Palestine and Cairo, and in Paris, Berlin and Los Angeles, and approach the script from calligraphy, from Latin-alphabet graffiti styles, and from type design. Chapters cover classical and contemporary calligraphy, Arabic typography, the painted lettering of Lebanese freight trucks, political graffiti on the walls of Palestine, and the crossover into Western cities, with essays by practitioners and writers in the field. Two hundred pages, hardcover, illustrated throughout, published in Berlin by From Here to Fame in 2011. This is the first printing; a revised third edition in paperback followed in 2013 with a new chapter on graffiti of the Arab uprisings.

Don "Stone" Karl began writing graffiti in 1983 and published his first book on train writing in 1986; he runs From Here to Fame and the Common Ground gallery in Berlin. Pascal Zoghbi founded 29Letters, the Arabic type foundry in Beirut.