Well here is what you can do.
There is a book called Digital Design with CPLD Applications & VHDL, 2nd Edition written by Robert Dueck, published by Thomson Delmar Learning. This proved to be very helpful to me. Regarding your project, CPLD with do the job, i think. FPGAs & CPLDs are similar in some terms & different in others. CPLD is more easier to learn as FPGA is considered to be industrial prototype PLD which has several other features which are not required, i think for your project.
Do you have any experience in building LED displays, if not then my advise would be to start with say a tri color display with scrolling capabilities, and then move to complex ones.
Bigaussie