Matplotlib is definitely a monolith, and it does seem like a huge fight to fix the style, but what is great is you can easily use some of its several predefined

Matplotlib is definitely a monolith, and it does seem like a huge fight to fix the style, but what is great is you can easily use some of its several predefined styles [0], define your own style sheets or customize specific style parameters through rcParams [1], or install third-party style sheets [2], so in the end the styling does seem much more manageable. [0]: https://matplotlib.org/stable/gallery/style_sheets/style_sheets_reference.html https://matplotlib.org/stable/gallery/style_sheets/style_she... [1]: https://matplotlib.org/stable/tutorials/introductory/customizing.html https://matplotlib.org/stable/tutorials/introductory/customi... [2]: https://pythonawesome.com/matplotlib-style-for-scientific-publications/ https://pythonawesome.com/matplotlib-style-for-scientific-pu...