Vladimir Ivanovich Kozlinskii was one of Vladimir Mayakovskii’s artistic collaborators and he was the head artist of the Petrograd ROSTA (Russian Telegraph Agency) Studio. Reportedly, Kozlinskii was born at Kronstadt naval base on Kotlin Island just west of St. Petersburg. His artistic endeavors began when he attended the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, enrolling in 1907. In addition to studying art under a number of private instructors, in 1911, Kozlinskii enrolled in IAN (Higher Art School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture) in Moscow where he studied engraving. During this period, he became friends with Vladimir Lebedev, an artist who would later be an important Soviet graphic designer.

1st Exemplary Ogiz RSFSR Typography Workshop of the Poligrafkniga Trust was located in Moscow at 28 Valovaia Street. Historically, the workshop began as the Sharapov-Sytin Partnerhip in the era prior to the Russian Revolution. Ivan Dmitrievich Sytin (1851-1934) was the son of a peasant. He opened a small print shop in Moscow using a single press and by the start of the 20th century his printing business (at Valovaia and Piatnitskaia streets) was the largest private printing company in tsarist Russia.

The history of IzoGiz begins with the formation of Ogiz, the Association of the State Book and Magazine Publishers. In 1930, the Sovnarkom of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic established Ogiz to centralize publishing under a monopoly in order to eliminate duplication of printed material, to streamline and control publishing production and its output, and to create a base for marketing books, training and technical manuals. In 1931, the Central Committee of the USSR ordered certain publications be separated from Ogiz. The separation principally affected technical manuals and propaganda material issued by the publisher. For example, posters, art magazines and artistic books were placed under Izogiz (Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo), the fine arts section of Ogiz. In 1963, Izogiz was merged with the publishing house, "Soviet Artist" (Sovetskii khudozhnik).