Enker,
I'm currently about a year and a half into designing a Formula 1 racer for Reno. I'll give you two books you should look at first:
1) Simplified Aircraft Design for Homebuilders by Dr. Dan Ramer. This book costs about $15 or so, and will give you a sneak peak at design analysis and some of the factors inherent in the design process. Dr. Ramer states plainly that the book is merely an introduction and references many more detailed books for specific design elements. Work through this book over the course of a couple days, and if you like what you've read so far, go to step two...
2) Aircraft Design, A Conceptual Approach, 4th Edition also by Dr. Dan Ramer. This book will run you around $100 and is a textbook quality resource that's used for design classes for Aerodynamic Engineering students. One of the classes I found that uses this book is a Masters degree capstone course, so its for real. This book is the meat and potatoes of what was glossed over in the first book. Strap on your Math Hat, and dust off the calculator and MS Excel, because you're getting ready to do math that (unless you were a math or engineering major) is going to knock your socks off. Once you get through this book (over the course of a few months) you will have merely scratched the surface of the design process. Once your design is conceptually complete, you begin the more difficult parts of actually analyzing how to turn your drawing on paper into an actual prototype.
What I'll say is that this stuff is not a casual excercise. It is not impossible for the lay person to do as evidenced by Peter Garrison's Melmoth aircraft. But, I'll tell you that you're going to invest a considerable amount of time and money simply doing analysis, lofting the drawings, Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) Modeling, Finite Element Analysis (FEA) Modeling for the structural portions, etc. At some point though, you will have to find outside help, and that costs a lot of money. Since my design is going to be completely carbon fiber, kevlar and kevlar honeycomb, it was going to demand outside fabrication as well, since you can't do that stuff in your garage.
Ultimately, even if I never build the thing, I have learned an unbelievable amount of stuff about aircraft, aerodynamics, materials, etc. So, in that vein, its an awesome thing to get into, but just realize that its a whole lot of work, time, energy, and money to go from concept to finished aircraft.
