def figsize(x=8, y=7., aspect=1.):
    """ manually set the default figure size of plots
    ::Arguments::
        x (float): x-axis size
        y (float): y-axis size
        aspect (float): aspect ratio scalar
    """
    # update rcparams with adjusted figsize params
    mpl.rcParams.update({'figure.figsize': (x*aspect, y)})