Control design is a rich problem which requires consideration of many issues such as load disturbance attenuation, set-point tracking, robustness with respect to process variations and model uncertainty, and effects of measurement noise. The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the trade-offs between performance and robustness explicitly. This is accomplished by introducing plots that show the tradeoffs for PI and PID control. These also provide valuable understanding of design compromises used for common PI design methods. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.