There were some awesome design sites I used to follow back around 2000, sadly most of them aren't around today.
Halovision (Christopher Dang) - This would have to be my all time favourite, sadly it no longer exists. You can see some of his
older works here though, and he has somewhat moved away from graphic design to drawing based art (his
Livejounal here).
Floodgear (Luke Yoo) - Was very influential in terms of graphic design a few years ago, the site still exists but has not been updated in years.