ggplot has many built-in themes if you dislike the defaults. theme_minimal() is a newer one which is close to the FiveThirtyEight style and it works great.
It looks better, but still I don't really get what is so great about ggplot. With base R I can pretty much make a chart look however I want based on the context, if it is just something quick and easy for me to check something (where axis labels dont really matter etc) it is like one line of code too.