anti-illustrator

adobe illustrator has its purposes, but let those purposes NOT be to tweak matlab output so that it looks more aesthetically pleasing.  matlab output edited by illustrator one time is tolerable, but if you have to do it two, three, four times before you get your final plot, you're likely to poke your eyes out with a blunt object.

don't be a fool!

not that i've mastered these commands yet, but setting font, font size, line width, and tick properties goes a LONG way. i haven't used illustrator to "fix" a plot since i've started using stuff like this:

xlb=xlabel('strength (kPa)','FontName','arial');

ylb=ylabel('erosion','FontName','arial');

set([xlb ylb],'FontSize',14,'FontName','arial','LineWidth',1.5 )

axis square;

set(gca,'FontSize',14,'FontName','arial', 'LineWidth',1.5, 'Ticklength', [0.025 0.025])

gca is important.