How to adjust position of axis labels in 3D plots

I am preparing 3D plots and have found that the default axis labels are too close to the tick labels, especially when large font sizes are chosen. As such, I would like to specify the position of the axis label. Unfortunately, I haven’t met much success. See the code below (based on one of the mplot3d examples). Does anyone have any tips on how to move the axis labels further away from the axis in 3D plots?

Thanks,
Justin

from mpl_toolkits.mplot3d import axes3d
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, projection=‘3d’)
X, Y, Z = axes3d.get_test_data(0.05)
ax.plot_wireframe(X, Y, Z, rstride=5, cstride=5)
ax.set_xlabel(‘x’)

This doesn’t work:

ax.w_xaxis.set_label_coords(-0.2, -0.2)

This doesn’t work either:

ax.w_xaxis.label.set_position((-0.2, -0.2))

The axis label positions appear to have changed, but not in figure

print ax.w_xaxis.label.get_position()

plt.show()