The aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive range of design techniques for the synthesis of the standard compensators (Lead and Lag networks as well as PID controllers) that in the last twenty years have proved to be of great educational value in a vast number of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Control throughout Italy, but that to-date remain mostly confined within this country. These techniques hinge upon a set of simple closed-form formulae for the computation of the parameters of the controller as functions of the typical specifications introduced in Control courses, i.e., the steady-state performance, the stability margins and the crossover frequencies.