Sergei Matveevich Kovan'ko (1908–1949) worked in applied and industrial graphics for most of his career. He studied at the Architecture School of the Kharkov Art Institute in Ukraine. In the late 1920s and into the early 1930s, he illustrated Vsesvit (Universe) magazine in Kharkov and illustrated and designed books for the Young Guard publishing house, the Art publishing house and several other publications. Kovan'ko designed the Soviet section of the International Aviation Exhibition in Milan (1935). In 1949, a retrospective exhibition of his work was held in Moscow.

Located in the town of Kharkov in the Ukrainian SSR, the Chromolit Lithography Workshop was named in honor of Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinskii (1877-1926). Dzerzhinskii was head of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK) that was also known as the Cheka, a "secret" police unit that handed internal and political affairs.

Knigospilka was the All-Ukrainian Cooperative Book Merchandising and Publishing Union. Based in Kharkov, Ukraine, it operated from 1920 to 1929. While it occasionally published posters, its chief task was turning out books and literature for use in Consumers' Societies, Workers' and Transport Societies, and for the rural population in Ukraine. To that end, the publisher played a role in the implementation of Communist Party policy in the countryside. After 1922, Knigospilka concentrated on publishing informational literature concerning agriculture in the rural cooperative movement.