Can anybody point me to a series of beginner tutorials pertaining to GUI development?
This is an awesome tutorial series:
http://walkerboystudio.com/html/unity_training___free__.html#unity3javaScript
If you look at the game project 1, there is GUI HUD basic tutorials. There are more complex GUI videos in the other game projects. If you are new to scripting I would just do all of the tutorials, really helped me out.