Anyone got tips on how to make matplotlib charts look nicer, with better typography, spacing, colors?

Tufte-like look & feel would be ideal, but I don't even know if it's possible with matplotlib.

Have you asked ChatGPT? It had a few suggestions that seemed a little basic. 

Try the Seaborn or ggplot styles.

You can also make a custom rc_params file to fine-tune the rendering options to your liking; e.g.

from matplotlib import rc_file

rc_file(your_rc_params_filepath_here)

Seaborn, which has several nice styles 

my favorite style is ‘fivethirtyeight’

OK, last comment, I swear!

Someone wrote a Tufte style package for matplotlib: https://github.com/ninivert/matplotlib_tufte

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