The 1st Offset Printing Plant of the Lensovnarkhoz (Leningrad Economic Regional Council) was located near Kronverkskaia and Mir Streets in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). In the late 1950s until the early 1960s, the printer’s operations were managed by the UPP (Printing Industry Management) of Lensovnarkhoz. Historically, the printer had roots in Imperial Russia as a large operation founded in 1881 by Theodore Kibbel (Fedor Fyodorovich Kibbel') until it was nationalized by the Soviets in 1917. After its initial nationalization, the printer's management (via a series of government-controlled printing trusts) and its name both changed over the decades.

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).