One of these days I'll get serious about trying to configure KDE to actually look usable. Every time I try it (about once every 1.5 years) I keep getting struck

One of these days I'll get serious about trying to configure KDE to actually look usable. Every time I try it (about once every 1.5 years) I keep getting struck by how everything is the wrong size or is spaced incorrectly relative to everything else. Like the search field in the 4th screenshot in this article. Why are the magnifying glass and delete icons essentially flush with the edges of the field, while the search string is is an entire length of the icons away from the magnifying glass? It doesn't just look bad, it looks like a mistake. Even the title of the General pane is closer to the delete icon than the text the delete icon actually will delete. That's a particularly egregious example, but there's stuff all over the place in KDE that bugs me. In the 2nd screenshot the Start button is aligned with... nothing else at all. And it makes the part of my brain that processes design hierarchy cringe.