thanks for the reply, I was just searching for those 74hc959 chips as I thought they might be what I needed to start with. I have literally just ordered them.
Oh hark at me, I sound like I know what I'm doing. Honestly I didn't know about those chips until yesterday when I was looking through the tutorials. I have very little experience with chips, I've put a 555 timer in a couple of circuits but thats it. Datasheets and DIL packages are all new to me.