Doing some simple review/research. Good to do when you don't do this stuff for a living.

I've also made the design decision to make the LED power drive into its own reusable board. I will use a latching shift register to take make a 3 pin interface, allowing me to use a smaller cheaper package for the FPGA with less pins. Plus since this is just going to be switching a DC source for the LED strips, it could be used in future projects. I'll build it with 16 high side outputs and 16 low side outputs, which will cover all my LED segments with room to spare.

http://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/transistor/tran_7.html

http://www.electronics-tutorials.ws/transistor/tran_4.html

http://www.edaboard.com/thread253098.html