Paul Kagan received a degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley in 1965, after which he worked as a television news writer, photographer, graphic artist and magazine art director. Kagan spent five years researching "New World Utopias: A Photographic History of the Search for Community", which was published in 1975. The project researched California's "utopias" from 1870 to 1975 and collected records and contemporary photographs of these communities, using many in his poster designs. He died in California in 1993.