Founded in 2008, From Here to Fame Publishing was the brain child of Don Karl and Akim Walta. The company was run by Don Karl and staged, curated and collaborated with international Urban Art and Hip Hop projects around the world. In 2013 we received a prize rewarding our cultural work by the Senate of Berlin. In 2015 the publishing company merged with the graffiti art supply brand
On The Run.

After twelves years the founders parted ways in 2020. This website is an archive of our work.

Don Karl aka Stone is a graffiti writer, author and publisher. He started to write graffiti in 1983, as one of the first writers in Germany. In 1986, he published his first book on train writing “Die Züge gehören uns” (The trains belong to us) with Heyne Verlag. Many books and articles have followed since. Over the years, he has participated in and curated various international urban art exhibitions and projects, such as Cubabrasil and White Wall Beirut. His ongoing project Arabic Graffiti, resulted in three books and countless exhibitions, events and collaborations in Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, France and other countries. He is part of the Homeland Hackers, The Arabian Street Artists. He has extensive professional experience as a publisher.

At From Here to Fame Publishing our roots were firmly set in urban culture. Not only did we produce literature about graffiti, street art, design, Hip Hop and the scenes and phenomena that surround it, we lived it. Our team comprised of an international, assortment of urban culture activists, with backgrounds in graffiti writing, art & design, scene involvement and documentation. The initial idea was to create engaging and relevant books “from writers, for writers” that document and preserve graffiti history and legends at work. Inspired by how expressions of urban art evolved, this concept expanded in time to include all areas of urban culture, art, typography and design. All of our publications were collaborations with international artists, writers and researchers who have been personally involved in shaping or documenting the development of their respective scenes. The relationships formed with many of these artists and activists have been nurtured by individual members of our team throughout more than twenty-five years of involvement in the global urban art movement and through numerous off shoot cultural projects, exhibitions, and publications. This inside perspective not only gave us our edge, it meant that our readers got the lowdown directly from the source. Through our collective experience and knowledge we promoted the history, development and influence of these urban cultures in our society—with a keen focus on a young generation that is learning from its beginnings, and contributing to its future.


Akim Walta aka Zebster is a graffiti writer, music producer (ZEB.ROC.SKI) and controversial business man and organizer of international Hip Hop projects. Zebster is infamous in the Hip Hop community for his efforts to spread the culture around the world. He began breaking and writing graffiti in the early 80s and was considered one of the top European writers of the era. In 1990, he started the On The Run Graffiti Magazine with unpaid volunteers, by 1992 he founded the Hip Hop label MZEE Records and later in 1995 he co-founded From Here To Fame as a Hip Hop network company...with volunteers. He is the author of "Graffiti Art Germany" (1994) and producer of the Martha Coopers bestseller "Hip Hop Files". In 2007, he founded the Hip Hop Stützpunkt in Berlin (with the hard labor of many volunteers) and curated cultural projects in China, Bangladesh, India and Russia often using - youguessed it -volunteers.