Help designing a simple counter
I think you might be "in over your head" - this site is not really suited to leading people from zero knowledge of electronics to a complete solution, it's better at solving specific problems.

Having said that, if you want to do this with discrete components I would look at 74HC160 (BCD counter) and 74HC4511. If you want to get something working from scratch as easily as possible, a microcontroller solution (e.g. Arduino) is a good start.