diff --git a/doc/examples/plot_otsu.py b/doc/examples/plot_otsu.py
index 5221e934..b3b8e279 100644
--- a/doc/examples/plot_otsu.py
+++ b/doc/examples/plot_otsu.py
@@ -14,12 +14,16 @@ the intra-class variance.
 .. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otsu's_method
 
 """
+import matplotlib
 import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
 
 from skimage.data import camera
 from skimage.filter import threshold_otsu
 
 
+matplotlib.rcParams['font.size'] = 9
+
+
 image = camera()
 thresh = threshold_otsu(image)
 binary = image > thresh