distance between tick labels and axes

Hi all, I'm trying to make some nice plots, but I have the

    > following problem. I think that ticks labels are too close
    > to axes. Are there some trics to set this distance?

Set these two parameters in matplotlibrc
http://matplotlib.sf.net/.matplotlibrc

  tick.major.pad : 4 # distance to major tick label in points
  tick.minor.pad : 4 # distance to the minor tick label in points

You can also set rc parameters with the rc function.